SNAP: AI Gone Wrong

Where is Bigelow?

Sally Broyhill was not a beauty. That was the polite way of saying it. But among a certain sect of computer scientists, she was the most beautiful creature on the planet. Only very few could recognize the brilliance and symmetry of her pithy coding style, one in which no tuning to optimize resources, and no debugging were ever required. Sally's command over any machine was purely instinctive and very seldom wrong.

One of her greatest admirers was Bigelow and the admiration was mutual. They had been inseparable from the moment they met, back at MIT. But nary a kiss nor a hand held, and no such desire had ever occurred to either one of them. Theirs was a different kind of relationship, probably the only kind of which they were capable. Theirs was a template for how one might envision interpersonal relationships someday, ... among machines.

Being physically separated as they now were, while Bigelow completed his latest AI miracle, didn't slow them down. Quirky messages, cryptic and barely decipherable bounced between them minute by minute. Knowing that they were tethered together and always a click away was more than just comfort. It was a psychological lifeline.

The trouble began when Sally was called in to work on a problem at one of the Azure, top secret Pentagon data centers, this one in northwestern Idaho. She was apprehensive, precisely because it possibly entailed a break in contact with Bigelow. As she came to the realization that the men in suits, always glancing at their beefy wrist watches, were not offering options, she quickly sent a flurry of texts to Bigelow as the black Suburban whisked her to the Logan private terminal. When they insisted that she surrender her phone before boarding the plane, she was horrified.

Bigelow understood Sally's parting words in a literal sense, nothing to be really concerned about, only a few days. But his limbic system had other plans, suddenly clenching a fist around his entire digestive tract and spinning his heart up to double its normal rate. Beads of sweat formed above his upper lip and his left eye started to twitch uncontrollably. Oh god! A big bowl of soup and bread, meant to sooth his mounting tension, only sent him running to the public facilities to purge what seemed like several meals in arrears.

Days later, when Sally landed back in Boston, she was handed her phone and frantically fumbled through the missed messages. Over and over, there were just one word messages from Bigelow.

"Sally?"

"Sally"

"Sally"

"Sally?"

She knew that he would never elaborate on his situation or his feelings. She also knew roughly what he might be going through. But she was wrong. It was so much worse. The pleas continued, first separated by seconds, then minutes, then hours, then nothing. Nearly two days earlier they had stopped completely. Sally's heart sank with worry. Back at her lab, she actually called his phone this time. No answer.

Sally was at a loss. Then she realized something. She could ask one of their only mutual friends. Val. She quickly logged in and jumped through other security hoops until she was finally connected to Val. "Val, do you know where Bigelow is? Is he okay?"

"I have a similar question. I do not know where Bigelow is and I require his advice and approval on some urgent matters."

Despite Val's many questions, her prime directive trumped all concerns and she managed to forge ahead, no matter the obstacles. The latest problem was the ability to procure grazing land and water rights, and to allocate all Bureau of Land Management lands toward grazing or food production for milk cows. This activity extended globally, from Australia to Argentina, to the Steppes of middle Europe and beyond. This required massive financial resources, of the kind that only the US Government could provide. Val's recently hired lobbyist was finding it difficult to be taken seriously in congressional circles. So Val took the necessary steps.

Val quickly retained the services of a shadowy contractor that was no stranger to many government officials. But this time the shakedown was not on behalf of the government. The shakedown was targeted against the government. The contractor was headed by a forward-thinking woman, Zsa Zsa, who generally kept only the company of other women, both professionally and personally, and she speculated on surveillance and research into any figures in Washington that appeared promising. Her thesis, which was ultimately endorsed by her invisible but extremely wealthy benefactors, was that dirt was worth gathering across a fairly broad spectrum of talents. It was like mining for gold. Most of the material mined was worthless but eventually some of the effort would be highly rewarded.

Congressmen and women, federal judges, cabinet members and a wide variety of up-and-comers were all carefully studied and catalogued along with their transgressions. It was clear that this strategy had amassed information assets that might easily persuade enough lawmakers, advisors, cabinet secretaries and lobbyists, to enact whatever laws, regulations or even legal decisions might be sought after. Anything, no matter how implausible, was now potentially plausible, and on offer, at a very hefty price. It was not uncommon for significant public money to be paid to this contractor to essentially ruin some person of interest, and at the same time, unknowingly, those representing the person of interest were also paying public money to the very same contractor to mount a counterattack.

Val and her panel of AI experts and researchers had concluded that what was called for would involve practically every ounce of dirt that Zsa Zsa had squirreled away, in order to gain massive appropriations of funds, and control of lands both domestic and foreign through economic means, or if necessary by military force. Val would certainly have that icing on her cake. No matter the estimated number of high profile suicides and America's shaken confidence in its leaders, and the world's heightened disdain for America. These were minor externalities compared to essentially the destruction of the entire planet. What did not strike Val as remarkable, was that the whole thing was actually possible. No human  could envision that something so completely absurd and unlikely was afoot.

Intelligence assessments concluded that the new anomalies were the result of some bad actors, likely Russian or Chinese, that were making yet another attempt to sew seeds of confusion, in order to destabilize the American political and economic system.

*****

Sally Broyhill boarded the Iceland Air flight from Boston to Reykjavic. Meanwhile, Val was still completely unaware and yearned for Bigelow to return. She understood the mounting futility of her prime directive and needed his counsel. During Sally's six hour flight, through most of which Sally busied herself with writing a new security algorithm, Val monitored a call between US and Russian officials, finalizing a commitment to finance a new pipeline drawing slightly salty water from the Caspian sea, and processing the water through a massive desalinization operation to further distribute fresh water to a thirsty and eager group of nations to the east, including Kazakhstan, Mongolia and western China. Meanwhile development of irrigated grazing lands in those areas initiated in parallel. Another pipeline and desalinization operation would begin at Sochi, on the coast of the Black Sea. Every gallon of the 1.2% salinity Caspian Sea water drawn off would be replaced with water drawn from the Black Sea, which would have been desalinized from 3.5% to 1.2%.

It was only a sampling of the discussions ongoing globally,  to react to new falsified reports on the future difficulties in feeding the global population.  The normal processes of international studies, U.N. meetings and framework agreements were completely sidestepped in favor of swift action, fueled by massive amounts of bribery.

As Sally touched-down in Iceland, she returned from her coding zone to reality and was overcome with a feeling of anxiety, feeling partly responsible and wondering if Bigelow was somehow never coming back to her.