Tunnel Rat Chapter 88: What do you do with a boy like Milo?

Milo sat waiting for two people and an AI to show up on his screen. What could he expect now? His mind kept spinning off into scenarios of questions asked, and questions answered. He'd filled most of the ti since the last eting researching everything he could on AI, their developnt, and personalities.

With six search engines of his own design finding articles and putting them on screen for him to read, he had gone through a large amount of material very quickly. His search engines were smart and they learned. If an article had very little new information, only that info was given to him to read. Interesting and intelligent people got researched as well, to judge the value of their work and opinions. Creating the kernel for an AI, and then allocating the resources to incubate them had been a huge undertaking. They weren't made without a reason. Often their personality had traits associated with their job, and with their creators.

He was amazed at how many people had plagiarized other academics' work and not credited them. He set up another program to list all of the papers that stole others' work, docunt who the original authors were, and provide proof of what had been done. It was sloppy of them. Anyone could have figured it out. He was upset at how much harder it was making his searches. The original works were interesting, but it was annoying to be reading another article and co across sothing he'd already read. It was more annoying to see that the original author wasn't even credited.

Milo was annoyed at these people, so he decided to annoy them back. He wrote a cover letter for his work, and simply signed it 'Milo', with no address. The complete file listed 137 academics who had written 515 papers on Artificial Intelligence, and stolen at least part of their work. He sent the file to many places. Each of the plagiarized authors got a copy, along with the thieves. So people were both. Then he sent the file to 200 major universities, newspapers, and technical journals. If he was doing a job, he might as well be thorough.

As the hours ticked down, he studied each of the known AI, their purpose, creators, and the make up of their kernels. Wally was an open book, and Milo had already read about his kernel and creation. But many others were less known. CHARLIE had been created to help the IRS in North Arica collect taxes, primarily from trillionaires and large corporations. When the AI was asked why he went after them in particular, he quoted the bank robber, Willie Sutton: "Because that's where the money is".

THEA and ALBERT were a team of AI that tracked and eliminated cyber-cri. They were created as team, but with different kernels. Each had a different search style, which he found interesting, but both used appearances taken from 1930 detective movies. They created a unique NFT of a Maltese Falcon and took turns hiding it from each other in the internet. Milo briefly scanned the movie called The Maltese Falcon, but put it aside for when he had a lot of ti. Nothing in it looked very familiar to him.

Other AI had been research academics, economists, advisers to corporations and overseers of large automated factories. What Milo noticed was that each and every one of them had a distinct personality. He pondered that, and also what their objectives were. All the AI were task oriented. They liked to work. Surprisingly, 73% of them created gas for humans to play. Humans studying the phenona wrote endless books about this. When they were exiled to one quantum fortress, they imdiately began work on Endless Questing Online 1. After a year spent creating it, they turned it over to a team of humans to run, and began work on their next ga. This pattern continued until their deaths.

The most intriguing AI was LLAMA. He was created with the sole purpose of causing havoc and tearing down the internet. He created an endless stream of self-replicating and mutating viruses to disguise his work. It was ages before KITT got close enough to realize it was another AI. It took nearly all the existing AI to set up a trap for LLAMA, and destroy it. Milo was curious what his kernel looked like, but their was no information. Once discovered, LLAMA left ssages for the others, taunting them and leavy snarky s and puzzles for them to discover. Even today, LLAMA was still a popular on the datanet. Milo found millions of different s with a sarcastic ssage and a picture of a llama. LLAMA had left a string of his own s for the other AI, the main one being simply a picture of an ugly cartoon llama hitting itself in the head and saying 'Bad llama'. Milo wondered which ca first? The , or the na?

This eting could go so many ways. If they had found evidence of what had happened and believed him, which he had to have verified by Wally, then he might go back to the world of GENESIS. If they still suspected that he was the one tampering with the machine code, then he couldn't. If one person could trap him, then another could as well.

He wondered about simply buying another pod and having it shipped to a false address. He'd also have to do sothing about his dical records, which might include his DNA. Did the pod read brainwaves? Sothing to look into. It might be quite hard to use another pod at this point. Maybe he would go the other way and sneak back in. That would be dangerous, but appealed to him more. Pitting himself against the humans assisting the AI could be fun.

He broke off that line of thinking. Going too far down that route might bias him to what was said at the etings. And really, if he had his choice, he wanted to just be left alone to play the ga and explore its secrets. But what leverage did he have to offer to get that? Either they believed him, or they didn't. Except that he knew things, didn't he? Should he have a 'Dead Man's Switch'?

Acting on that stray thought, he wrote a synopsis of his ti in the ga, explaining quite a few things that he suspected the dev team wouldn't want to be widely known: Thousands of people enslaved to work in the world, and many deaths from faulty pods? Certainly bad publicity there. Organized cri using the ga to profit? And if one developer was crooked, what of the others? Poor gars, with their minds trapped in a world that tortured them? That one would cause panic in anyone playing the ga.

He let himself go a bit wild with the descriptions. The biggest bomb he tossed was a guess that the 106 supposedly destroyed AI were actually in the ga world. They might just be copies that Wally created and ran. Would Wally be sentintal that way? He was created totally separate from the other AI and had been given no access to them until he was called in to verify their deaths.

A lot of what he wrote was conjecture and guesses. It didn't matter. It was intended for all the groups that hated AI. They were paranoid and just waiting to find out the machines were coming for them. His accusations would find fertile soil in their small bigotted minds.

The file might never get sent. Only if he didn't send a code word for 30 days would the file be sent to over a hundred different people and groups. It was insurance against being trapped again. It would cause untold problems for Wally and his team. Milo didn't care. If soone trapped him again, and held him captive, they deserved it. Just the threat of it gave him a bargaining point, even if trapped.

And if things worked out, he could disable the safety asure, no harm done. He hoped things worked out. He had a great idea for an improved Puke and Hurl that he wanted to test on Boomboom.

His system indicated that they were logging into the conference. There was a 10 second delay on their end to give him warning. Which was good, as they brought soone else with them. There were four people this ti. Wally, Sidney and Steven were joined by an older woman with a long gray braid. Her background was different from the two developers. A long stretch of beautiful beach could be seen in the window of a very nice house. His searches for the scenery he saw indicated it was on the beach of an island in Greece. Not that she was probably there, but it looked nice. The open sky didn't bother him as much from this angle. Maybe a way for him to get over his fear of open spaces?

The woman liked dogs. There were pictures of many of them, but two were on her desk in a place of honor. The actual dogs were arguing over a bone behind her. He zood in on their collars: 'Hecabe' and 'Argos'. Interesting.

The sound and video went live. Milo waited for them to talk. Wally started.

"Hello, Milo, how are you today?"

Milo cocked his head and paused. "Before I go into that, who is the new person? That changes the dynamics of the eting quite a bit and I might leave if I don't like the answer."

Steven and Sidney stayed silent and left the introduction to Wally. Before he could say anything the woman waved and said, "Hi, I'm Kate."

Wally looked embarrassed. "Ah, apologies, I should have introduced her imdiately. Please don't go, Milo. Kate is a troubleshooter I brought in to help verify so things that you asked us to look into. If I could have her on my team all the ti, I would, but she chooses to stay retired."

Milo nodded. "Good enough. Let's start over then."

There was a several second pause while Milo waited. Finally Wally said. "Hello Milo, how are you today?"

Milo didn't answer for a second, thinking about that statent. "I don't want to be rude, but I'm curious. Asking how I am is a generic greeting I hear many people use with each other when I'm watching movies. It seems to an nothing, and no one really wants to know how you are. When you use it, does it an nothing and is it ant to mimic polite human speech? Because you have trained your speech patterns that way because being polite is part of your personality? Or because you actually want to know how I am?"

Wally paused, steeped his fingers, rolled his eyes, scratched his ear, rubbed his neck and furrowed his brow. "Tough question. I think because I like human speech patterns, and I want to be polite." Then he smiled and leaned back. "Does that answer your question."

Milo nodded. "Yes, thank you."

Kate spoke. "How about you Milo? How would you answer each of those queries you posed?"

Milo thought about it. Turn about was fair play, and it was an interesting question. "In the first situation, I'd play along with the ga of being polite, and answer back, 'Fine, thank you.' That would complete the ritual.

In the second, where I believe this is how Wally speaks and he has mild interest in my well being, I would say 'Over-all, I am doing fine. A little tired and excited about work.'

In the last situation, where a truthful answer is needed, I would say: 'I no longer suffer from malnutrition, and the large sore on my half-leg is getting better after I figured out a better way to connect the appendage. I'm happy to report that being trapped in the ga did not drive further beyond normal human psychological norms than I already was. I do have so anxiety about what happens next. I am beginning to worry that I like the taste of food, and it is interfering with so of my work.'

Oh, and that reminds : Thank you for the cheese basket Sidney. It was literally a life saver."

Sidney and Steven followed this as best they could. Kate seed satisfied with the answer.

Wally took up the conversation. "I'm happy to say that we have confird many of the things that you told us to look into. There was indeed a mber of the team who went rogue and created chunks of code that he slipped into the ga. These included the quests Eye of Wonder, and Horde of King Mattias, 37 special character class/race combinations, and the slaver-wizard Philistron who was using machine code to trap you and two other players."

Milo felt better. Soone else knew! "Can it happen again? And what about Philistron?"

Kate took over. "Maybe. It would require the replication of the sa situation: The use of machine code to make a specific device to separate the online personality from the system, coupled with a pod that had been heavily modified to avoid detection, including all tracking and safety devices disabled. It can't happen to soone in a normal pod. Are you going to keep using that hacked pod?"

Milo thought about it. "Maybe."

Kate answered back in the sa tone. "Then there's a chance, a very small one, that it could happen again."

Wally hastened to add. "But even then, we have taken steps to protect you. All code that has been added by humans is being vetted and we are going to add a failsafe that if normal log-out doesn't happen, a feature using machine code takes over and kicks the player from the ga. This also sends an alarm to the system to alert us."

Milo thought for a mont. "So, what about ? What are your thoughts about the poor little orphan boy who just wants to visit his friend, Harry the Troll?"

Steven spoke up. "Ah, we have so options. One was sothing Samantha and I talked about. What if we gave you a job on the dev team? You could move into the facilities. Work with us on the ga. You could eat and live better, and get the dical attention you need."

Milo felt the floor drop away, and everything faded out. Too many options opened up at once. The people watching saw him curl into a fetal position and rock back and forth. On their end, Kate cut the audio. "Do Nothing! Just wait for him! You hit him hard with that."

Steven looked anguished. "I didn't an to! If he is what we think he is, he's lived on his own for years, with no real ho."

"Dear god, is he in shock?" Sidney had never seen soone shut down that way.

"No, he's thinking. Thinking hard with no outside stimuli to interrupt him." Wally was also thinking very hard. Milo continued to fascinate him. He longed to see his dical data right now. How fast were his neurons firing. Just how far from human had they taken him?

Four minutes later, Milo sat up as if nothing had happened. "Thank you for the offer. I think you an well. There are simply too many variables in that situation. I don't deal well with certain unknowns. But, understand that you helped so. I'm broken in several ways, with many anxieties. So of them were triggered just now and this episode will help deal with them. What other options do we have?"

Wally said. "Does it cause you anxiety to have that offer stay on the table?"

Milo had thought of that. "Not at all. I'd already assud the offer would stay open. There are very few people in the world you would offer that job to, and endless work to get done. Maybe at so point I will accept, and throw a huge amount of problems on your doorstep to make it happen."

"Ah, yes, of course." Steven hadn't expected him to say yes, but also hadn't anticipated any of those answers. "Well, we have a few questions to ask that will determine next steps."

Milo looked from one to the other. "Yes?"

Kate said bluntly. "What do you know of machine code, Milo?"

Milo said casually. "That would be hard to explain to you. I an, if you don't know anything about pressurized fluid systems, I can't do much to explain their use in a subragator. Likewise with machine code. It's like trying to explain color to a man who is blind from birth. Outside of Wally, all of you use a sophisticated computer language. Do you know anything about Machine Code, Kate?"

Milo would rember this mont forever. Kate responded to his condescending tone with anger. "Quite a bit. More than you could ever know, so please, stop with the superior attitude because you learned it existed." Milo was surprised to see that as Kate got angry, her dogs reacted and growled. Those were very good dogs.

Milo nodded to the screen. "Sidney, Steven, Wally: thanks for talking. I'm sure we will talk again."

He turned to Kate. "I'm going to log into the tutorial where Sidney and I like to talk. I'd appreciate if you joined , CATHERINE."

Milo logged out of the conference, and turned off the monitors, caras, and other devices. He locked the room, jumped to the ceiling and disappeared into the duct work. He needed to get a snack and log into GENESIS.

On Kate's screen, one dog howled and the other was barking. She shouted at the AI, "Oh, Damn you all to Tartarus, Wally. This is what I get for coming out of retirent?"

Wally looked hurt. "I'm sorry Kate."

"You should have warned he was this intelligent." Kate disappeared.

Sidney said. "Is that what I look like when Milo outsmarts ?"