Page 104 of Clive Cussler Desolation Code

To account for the size of the swarm, they added another mile and then began to slow.

As the patrol boat came to a halt, Kurt jumped in the water.swimming to the captured AUV with a hammer in his hand. Several strikes to its propeller rendered the flukes useless. To make sure it didn’t sink, they wrapped it in life preservers and bolstered it with a set of buoys. To keep the locusts off it, they doused it with motor oil.

“Not the most environmentally friendly choice,” Joe noted. “But everything is relative at this point.”

With the roar growing louder and closer and the setting sun vanishing behind the approaching swarm, Kurt climbed back into the boat. “Get us out of here,” he said. “Or we’re going to be locust food.”

Joe brought the power on smoothly, pushing the throttle all the way up. Picking up speed, they raced to the east, riding the waves in a heavy, percussive pattern. The discomfort was a fair trade for putting maximum distance between themselves and the descending horde of hungry insects.

From several miles away, the swarm appeared like a swirling ball. It circled around on itself, expanding, contracting, appearing at times to turn inside out. Kurt had seen that pattern before: in the great schools of herring trying to avoid a predator, in flocks of starlings converging on an empty field, and in the tank beneath the solar panels in the bay off Vaughn’s island.

“Moths to a flame,” Joe said.

The swarm would churn and twist, descending into the sea and rising back into the sky a dozen times over the next seven days. Each version smaller than the last. Aircraft and satellites from various nations watched it grow tighter and more compact. Ten days on, a well-equipped expedition moved in to find that no more than a hundred thousand of the locusts remained, feeding on the bodies and eggs laid by the others. In another week, they, too, had vanished.

Similar scenes played out near the coasts of Pakistan, India, Thailand, and five hundred miles west of Australia. But in those cases theAUVs were destroyed and replaced with more powerful beacons broadcasting a matching signal.

Each brood was larger than the last, with the swarm approaching Thailand estimated to number in the trillions and believed to weigh a combined seven million tons.

When the fires of consumption had done their job, teams of scientists moved in to study what was left. Thousands of specimens from each brood were collected and preserved. They were studied and examined in great detail. Only one oddity was found that did not comport with the data Eve had taken from TAU. Not a single sample was found to carry the fertility virus.

Chapter 71

Six Weeks Later

The General Assembly Hall in the United Nations building was rarely used for anything less than a speech by a visiting dignitary. But it became the setting for multiple discussions on the activities of Ezra Vaughn, including the dangers presented by cloning, the sea locusts, and the fertility virus.

Above all, the members wanted to discuss artificial intelligence and the creation of sentience in electronic devices.

Members of NUMA offered live presentations to the assembly, while recorded video statements from Kai, Five, and several of the other clones were viewed and listened to with fascination.

As one might expect in a body made up of delegates from a hundred and ninety-three countries, the arguments, disagreements, and moments of outright confusion far outweighed anything approaching a consensus or accord.

On only one matter did the UN vote in unanimity and that was to affirm that cloned persons deserved full human rights protection afforded to all other members of humanity.

With that issue taken care of, the body turned to the thornier issuesof what Vaughn and TAU had done and what lingering dangers remained. On these issues Rudi Gunn, Hiram Yaeger, and Gamay Trout were the star witnesses.

Rudi went first, giving a lengthy explanation of events. The real fireworks didn’t start until the question-and-answer period, when he was peppered with inquiries about TAU, Max, and Priya.

It began with the representative from Norway, who was chairing the committee. “So after everything that’s happened and considering all the rapid developments in the world of artificial intelligence, we come to a simple question: Are these AI systems a danger?”

Rudi began to answer, but the representative interrupted him. “My apologies, Mr. Gunn, but we’d like to hear from Mr. Yaeger. He’s the creator of one of these machines. He’s also uniquely situated to gain our trust, unlike the generation of young geniuses and venture capitalists profiting from AI.”

Rudy sat back, yielding the spotlight and the microphone to Yaeger, who cleared his throat, leaned forward, and spoke. “For the record, I have nothing against a healthy profit margin, and I’m mildly hurt at being left out of the young genius category.”

“Aren’t we all,” the Norwegian replied.

Laughter rolled around the room. Yaeger had momentarily disarmed them, but they continued to look on him with a sense of transferred suspicion. After all, his own machine had gone rogue in one sense as well.

Yaeger grew serious. “To begin with, all things possessing power are dangerous. Electricity is dangerous. Cars are dangerous. Fire, the very first human discovery, is of course dangerous. So yes, these programs can be dangerous. The real question is: Are they malevolent or altruistic? I would submit that Max has proven itself to be a powerful guardian of the human race, not a danger.”

“It violated its programming to attack TAU, yes?”

“In a sense,” Yaeger agreed. “But it was motivated to prevent harm and act in a self-sacrificing manner. Max was almost destroyed in the endeavor.”

“ ‘Almost destroyed’?” another representative asked. “Are you suggesting that Max is a living thing that could die?”

“It’s a difficult question,” Yaeger said bluntly. “Max is a machine, but a unique machine. Max has spent twenty years growing and learning while working closely with many of our NUMA team members. It’s possible that those interactions and Max’s own programming allowed her to become self-aware. It’s also possible based on those experiences that Max chose a course of action that was in violation of the directives we had given her in service of the greater good in a simple mathematical way. Significant portions of Max’s programming and memory were destroyed during the conflict. We won’t know the ultimate effect of that until Max has been fully restored and reprogrammed.”

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