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ever. He is convinced, as you probably know, that the SAIs control nearly everything on Earth, and he fears having them listenin on what he has to say. For that reason, he is asking that you go up to Midway and meet with him there. He says that itwill be very much worth your while.”

“Alex,” Konstantin whispered in Koenig’s mind, “I strongly advise against this.”

“No,” Koenig said aloud. “Send someone else. I’m not a messenger boy for the damned Huffers.”

“The President anticipated your refusal, sir, and advised me to tell you that our civilization, as currently constituted, cannot survive if the machines are shut down. He believes Michaels and the Humankind Firsters represent a serious threat to our peace and well-being. He knows that you are pro-SAI but also that you are loyal to the USNA, and you have those security clearances I mentioned. He told me to ask you . . . ‘please.’”

Koenig blinked, not certain how to respond. “I thought President Walker and Dr. Michaels were best buds,” he said. “That Walkerhates super-AIs as much as Michaels does. That Michaels had been serving in an advisory capacity with Walker’s inner circle.This is kind of coming in out of the blue, you know?”

“The President believes—strongly—that the super-AIs need to be better controlled, that humans should have greater oversightover what they are doing, but—” Jennings emphasized the word, raising a forefinger as if to make the point “—he knows we can’t live without them. Michaelswould have us eliminate all super-AIs and plunge us into a new Dark Ages. Financial collapse. Social collapse. Government collapse. Chaos and bloodshedon a scale that’ll make these riots we’ve been having lately look like a protest by the Women’s Auxiliary of the Ancient AlienCreationist Church. We can’t allow that to happen.”

Maybe he had underestimated Walker . . . or misjudged him. His denial of the Singularity made him popular with a particularsegment of the USNA population, conservative neo-Luddites and those who saw the Singularity as something involving the ascensionof machines over Humankind. His rhetoric about reining in intelligent machines appealed to the same groups.

Maybe what he’d been saying for the past several years was just political rhetoric. Dangerous rhetoric, if Jennings was tobe understood, but more about expediency than true advocacy.

“So what does Walker want me to do about it?”

“As I said: talk to Michaels. Find out what he wants, but also see if he’s willing to compromise. Find out if he will support the control of SAIs, as opposed to their elimination. And do so in secret, without the media’s involvement. We don’t want the peoplemaking wild speculations about the President’s position.”

“It’s all sounding pretty far-fetched.”

“We need you, Mr. Koenig. The President needs you. Your country needs you. Quite possibly the whole of civilization needs you.”

Koenig thought Jennings was trying now to appeal to some grandiloquent sense in Koenig of greatness or destiny or heroic patriotism.Such lures weren’t going to work on him, but he had to admire Jenning’s passion . . . or maybe his acting ability.

“Konstantin?” he thought over the open channel.

“Again, I strongly advise against it, Mr. President. It might very well be a trap.”

A trap? To what end? If they wanted to kill him, they could do it easily enough—a missile fired into this house, for instance.

Besides, he was intrigued by Michaels’s motivation. What did the man really want? His anti-AI stance was problematic. His mobile mining units out in the asteroid belt were, for the most part, highlyautomated, with only small human crews to keep an eye on things. Most of those machines were ordinary AI, not self-aware super-AIslike Konstantin, but his fear of SAIs seemed inconsistent and hypocritical.

Koenig was forced to admit that he wanted to hear what Michaels had to say personally, rather than through the filter of themass media.

“How soon do you want me to go?” he asked aloud.

“The sooner the better, Mr. President,” Jennings said, finally using Koenig’s honorary title. “A private el-car has been setaside for your use. You can take along a couple of bodyguards or assistants, if you wish.”

Koenig gave it another few seconds’ consideration, then nodded. “I’ll go, Jennings. But just so you know, the President owes me for this one.”

Maybe, just maybe, he could leverage that gratitude into some kind of guarantee for Konstantin.

“I’ll inform the President, sir. And your nation thanks you.”

 

USNA CVS America

Flag Bridge

N’gai Cluster

1602 hours, FST

“The network is ready for initial testing, Admiral,” Konstantin told Gray. “Two thousand modules have been dispersed acrosslocal space and have been interconnected by laser-com transmissions.”

“How much time lag are we looking at?” Gray asked.

“Five and a half minutes at most. Our ships and the modules are spread out over an area 100 million kilometers across. WithAmerica at the center of the deployment, however, it will take half that for signals to reach us from those modules on the perimeter,and I will be there to coordinate the incoming data.”

“That could still slow things down quite a bit.”

“Not unacceptably. We are not in any particular hurry, after all. And we will need the widest dispersal possible in orderto sense something as subtle as gravity waves.”

“Okay, if you say so. How do you plan to test it?”

“You and your volunteers will enter the net. You should find it similar to the Godstream on Earth. A thoughtclick, and you’llfind yourself within a virtual world reflecting the energy patterns in space around us. After a little more than eleven minutes,I should have all incoming signals coordinated, and we shall be able to pinpoint nearby sources of gravity waves. Are youready to begin?”

“No,” Gray said with a blunt lack of enthusiasm. “But let’s do it anyway.”

Settling back in his seat, he closed his eyes, brought up an in-head menu, and thoughtclicked an icon. . . .

It was like the Godstream back home, but with a virtual reality set in deep space rather than a landscape of light and movementand three-dimensional geometric shapes. The sensation of flight was the same, as was the electric thrill pulsing up his spineand setting his mind free in a way that