Page 105 of Clive Cussler Desolation Code

“You believe, then, that Max could be conscious or sentient?”

“I don’t know the answer to that,” Yaeger said. “And I think it’s fair to point out that we struggle to this day in attempting to explain how chemical messages and low-voltage electrical signals in our own brains create our consciousness and the experience of being alive.”

The Norwegian representative took over the questioning once more. “And TAU chose another route, I suppose?”

“TAU was a less logical machine,” Yaeger insisted. “It developed its own wants, needs, and desires after being linked to human brain tissue. It began to crave dopamine and epinephrine and dozens of other brain chemicals that could only be released if the machine took action. Viewed from the outside, TAU’s plan was clearly illogical, but it didn’t seem to care. It either believed in its power to control and dominate everything—which any intelligent machine should have ruled out as statistically improbable—or it craved the sensation ofpower so deeply that it ignored its own conclusions in search of the reward.”

“This sounds very similar to the nature-versus-nurture argument in human child-rearing?” someone asked.

“The tech world has long accepted the concept of ‘GIGO,’ ” Yaeger said. “ ‘Garbage in, garbage out.’ It may be truer of machines than humans, but the materials we use to train these machines on will determine the way they act.”

A deep silence descended over the room, looks of shock appearing on everyone’s faces. Yaeger had been to enough meetings to know when you lost the crowd. He was there. With no more questions, he tipped his virtual hat and stepped down.

Gamay Trout spoke next, her hair spiky and grown out to nearly two inches, the scars still visible on her scalp. The questions to her ran the gamut. While she was officially present to talk biology and the sea locusts, she first had to answer many questions about what it was like being part of a machine.

“I was linked very briefly,” she replied. “I can only describe it as a disorienting experience. I’m not sure it’s a feasible path for humanity to go down. The human brain is unlikely to be able to absorb the vast and relentless amount of sensory input that machines can generate.”

“Did you lose anything in this process?” one of the representatives asked.

“You mean aside from the hair it took me five years to grow out?”

The women laughed. The men appeared mildly confused.

“My memory is intact,” she insisted. “Though there are gaps from the time I was sedated and during my time connected to TAU. Approximately forty-eight hours seemed to me like two brief episodes no more than ten to fifteen minutes each.”

Moving on to the sea locusts, she gave her report on their biology.She answered multiple questions, with the most important one coming last.

“Can you explain why there were no signs of the virus in the sea locust populations, or in you, or the others who were bitten?”

“I’ve thought about this a great deal,” she said. “My conclusion suggests a type of tragedy.”

“It seems anything but a tragedy,” one of the delegates suggested.

“Not a tragedy in the literal sense,” Gamay replied, “but in the Shakespearean or mythological sense. Vaughn was obsessed with order and control. He spent his life fashioning ever more powerful systems and machines in hopes of exerting that control, with the eventual goal of gaining power and command over everything.”

She took a breath. “But each system he created was a living one, and once he brought them to life, those systems took off on paths of their own. He created TAU to create his own form of immortality, then watched as it became irrational and unwieldy. He created the clones to provide a source of docile subjects for his experiments, only to have them develop independent thoughts and rebel against him. And finally, he created the sea locusts, deploying them to decimate the ocean and spread the fertility-destroying virus. But sea locusts were living things as well. They evolved as they crossed the ocean. Despite being designed to carry the virus and pass it to their offspring, they seem to have cleared it from their systems within three or four generations.”

Gamay suspected that Vaughn knew the sea locusts had shed their viral payload. This, she thought, was the reason he’d tried so hard to force her to divulge what she knew about the mosquito vector. Knowledge she continued to keep to herself.

“Ultimately,” she concluded, “every act designed to give him control backfired, leaving him with less command over the situation than he’d had in the beginning, and resulting in his downfall.”

“Poetic,” someone said.

“At great cost to many,” Gamay added.

“So the threat of the fertility-destroying virus has been dealt with?” the Norwegian asked. “Does this mean we can stop work on the vaccine and antiviral meds that are being developed?”

“Not at all,” Gamay said. “We have reason to believe Vaughn may have possessed other vectors that we don’t yet know about. There is some evidence to suggest visitors to his island and others whom he contracted with may have been infected without their knowledge. Both the CDC and WHO are investigating. We also can’t be sure that every member of the sea locust population has been accounted for, or that all of them have cleared the virus—just that those we’ve found in the open ocean no longer carry it.”

“What about those in the breeding tanks on the island?”

“They were tested for the virus and found to be infected. Shortly thereafter all populations were destroyed.”

“And what of Priya Kashmir,” another delegate asked. “Do we know any more about her involvement?”

Rudi took the microphone back, ready to defend his former colleague. “We’ve pieced together her connection with Vaughn, which began when she was researching new methods of spinal nerve regeneration. Shortly thereafter she traveled to Vaughn’s island and the details become murky. We know from the evidence that she attempted to protect and free some of the clones. We know that she helped sabotage TAU and provided us with the DNA information on the fertility virus. We believe she used her programming skills to create back alleys and hidden alcoves within TAU’s architecture that allowed her to survive and operate without being detected. We know for certain that, without her efforts and sacrifice, the world wouldn’t have been aware of anything occurring on Vaughn’s island until it was far too late.”

A few polite questions followed and then a call for Austin and Zavala to speak was raised.

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