The Sword and the Stone, pt 1
Sandra K slept soundly, undisturbed. He silently recorded her heartbeat. Some physical activity would do her good. Her brain was adapted to the demands of an Elite Go player, to the extent that was possible for a mostly unmodified human.
#1 wasn't really there in that hotel room, the night before Exeter colony's Annual Go Classic. #1 wasn't in the server room 20 miles away at the heart of the colony's infrastructure. #1 was that server room. Each processor on that floor was just one part of #1's computer brain.
Exeter's backup AI, #2, was one floor up, powered down. With a population of 3 million humans on Exeter, a lot was required for #1 to devote so much attention to one person. #1 had a suspicion that he hadn't yet completely developed. Sandra K was being targeted by an AI from Toyota's colonial network. IT could be a colonial level AI, like #1 (Exeter #1 for long), or a compound AI in charge of a particular subculture or organization's facilities.
The Go center didn't have a compound AI, or #1 would have been in conversation with them. For tournament results and up to day timekeeper, the Go center relied on a non-sentient control computer.
Someone on the Toyota network had been gathering data on the Go players on planet. Each data request costed the AI on the other end a lot. Half a dozen data requests had been sent. The requests had cost 30 million Google points, or by current exchange rates, 16 Toyota points.
There was a pattern to the requests, but the sender had issued convoluted instructions which made it much more difficult for #1 to gain full understanding. He had hypotheses, but needed more data before anything else.
It was helpful to have a few humans working for him, though he didn't need their help. Tracey was a 53 year old woman with a positive attitude, and a desire to go behind just having a hobby. The best thing #1 could do for her was to make use of her abilities. She was a calming presence with a colonist just needed to be talked to. #1 could use holos whenever he wanted or needed to, but again, a real human sometimes served just as well.
Jeffry didn't have a gun, though he really wanted one, despite having never seen one in his life. His "zinger" induced a ticklish sensation in the target. It was the most powerful weapon Google Colonial Network would allow a human to have.
Jeffry was very satisfied with the "zinger". It had settings all the way from light laughter to fall on the floor ticklish. Jeffry kept it on the maximum setting, though #1 had to order him to hold back on many occasions.
"Hey Uno", Jeffry said, standing outside the door to Sandra K's hotel room. Uno was Jeffry's nickname for #1.
There was no need for any kind of communication device. #1 was jacked in, everywhere and anywhere on colony. He could hear and be heard--anywhere.
"Just hold position until Sandra K leaves the hotel room, unless I tell you otherwise," #1 said.
"Boss," Tracey said quietly, "I assume you've accounted for the whirring sound coming from inside the room?"
"Hold on a 2 count then go in hot," #1 said.
His prior probability had been that no one on-colony was a valuable target for recruitment or for violence. An elaborate evasive system could gain entry into the compound for information gathering purposes, and without frequent intensive scans, he wouldn't be able to stop it. The hum exactly matched the ambient noise in the server floor, and even adjusted itself in a manner similar to how the processors and fans changed in responsive to environmental conditions.
To the humans entering the room, #1's actions were simultaneous. The small scanning drone was suctioned towards the air vent (which also served as a material evacuation system, while at the same time the grill on the air vent slid open with explosive force.
With his faster processing, he observed Sandra K react to the noise in slow motion, as Tracey and Jeffry cracked open the door.
I performed a thorough sweep of the room in half a second, and finding no more hostile intent, let my attention drift back to a human flow speed.
In the instant I had recognized the threat, I repurposed much of my processing power that was monitoring things like, the crew manifest of the next find ships due on arrival at the space, or the weather conditions for the next 210 hours, or a million other things.
For a moment, my attention was 100% focused on that hotel room, running at maximum CPU load. I could hear the fans start to downrate from their shrill emergency rpms as I watched Tracey reassure Sandra K.
Jeffry stayed back by the opened door.
My room by room sound buffered had knocked down the decibels for other hotel occupants, but some of them were waking up. I wrote and published a statement about the incident to the Hotel's information system, while I kept my eyes on Sandra K's hotel room, the rest of the hotel, and the evacuation system's report about the spy drone.
I redirected all processing power once again once I realized the drone I had flushed was a decoy. 5 milliseconds later, I was frustrated and also bemused by my counterpart's sophistication. I couldn't run at 100% attention for very long without drastic consequences. Somehow, in some small way, my counterpart had changed my colony.
I intended to find out why. There were fundamental scientific limitations which bounded how much damage he could have done in 5-10 millis.
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