She handed a page to Taylor, and another to Brodie. There were dense columns of text showing dates, names, and times of day. She continued, “Those are the Vault entrance logs for April and May.” She tapped the paper Brodie was holding, which had two rows of text marked with yellow highlighter pen. “That’s my locally stored copy of the April log. I marked the two entry logs that were missing from the intranet version.” She tapped Taylor’s page. “And this is May. One missing entry. All three show Roger Ames entering the Vault in the early-morning hours.”
Brodie and Taylor sat on the couch and looked over the logs, then swapped pages. “R. AMES” was listed on all three entry logs, with access times between 1:10A.M.and 2:45A.M.,depending on the day.
She continued, “I cross-referenced these missing logs with the Rangers’ sentry assignments. On all three days, the same Ranger was assigned to nighttime guard duty at the Vault, Private First Class Thomas Greer.”
She then produced two more pages and handed them to the agents.Three more entries were highlighted. “These are the missing bay storage logs. They match to the same times on the same days and are also coded to Major Ames’s personal security fob. And on all three occasions, he activates and releases Number 20. Bucky.”
Brodie stared at the dense columns of text. He said, “We will need the original log files.”
Dixon removed a thumb drive from her pocket and placed it on the coffee table. “All there.”
Taylor picked up the thumb drive. She asked, “Is there any innocent explanation you can think of for this?”
Dixon shook her head. “I wish there were. I think Roger wrote a piece of software to somehow manipulate Number 20, and he hid it so well none of us can find it.”
“Is that possible?” asked Taylor. “To hide software in that way?”
“If you’re Roger Ames, it is.”
Brodie asked, “Is there a reason why he would have picked that particular unit? Are they all truly identical?”
“Everything but the numbers etched on their breastplates, and a cellular transponder that serves to keep track of each unit during exercises for the after-action. He could have picked it at random.” She added, “It could explain why Bucky malfunctioned during training. Once that happened, maybe Roger figured that his tinkering might get discovered, and he wanted to undo what he’d done.”
Taylor added, “And maybe Bucky didn’t like that plan.”
“These machines don’t have motives,” replied Dixon. “They have inputs and outputs. Cause and effect. Roger scrambled the code, and it made this thing malfunction. And Roger’s death could simply be another consequence of that malfunction. Maybe Number 20’s concept of the battlespace had been altered, and it saw Roger as an adversary. And for some reason it came to understand—or to be instructed—that its own hands were offensive weapons.”
If this was true, it would explain why Ms. Dixon and LieutenantLehner were not called to the lab the night Bucky was brought there for diagnostics. Roger Ames had screwed up, and he didn’t want anyone to know about his late-night tinkering—except, perhaps, for his close friend and confidant Captain Spencer.
Taylor asked, “If there’s hidden code, could it have infiltrated the other units?”
Dixon nodded. “They all share the hardwired data link inside the Vault. The safest and only thing to do is nuke the whole system. A root-level wipe of every single unit, and a re-install of the original software.”
Brodie said, “The bots are evidence in our investigation, Ms. Dixon. And I’m sure you have no desire to tamper with evidence in this case.”
“They are dangerous, Scott. Not just Bucky. All of them.”
Taylor said, “I’m glad you’ve come to that conclusion. Going forward you will certainly be more careful than Major Ames was. In the meantime, if you can’t figure out whether and in what manner the major altered Bucky’s programming, we will bring in someone who can.”
Dixon stared at Maggie Taylor a moment. She adjusted her oversize glasses. “I will be advising my superiors at DARPA that we should do a wipe and reset on all sixty units. I am confident that Captain Spencer will agree with that advisement. Whether that is evidence tampering or a reasonable precaution will be decided by people higher up the chain than any of us.”
“It’s not a precaution,” said Taylor. “It’s reckless. And I don’t need to be a computer scientist to understand that.”
“Actually, Maggie, you do.”
It occurred to Brodie that Ms. Taylor and Ms. Dixon did not like each other very much. Maybe he should have picked up on that before, but when it came to reading the feelings and intentions of the opposite sex, Scott Brodie was only semiliterate. He decided to step in and try to defuse the situation. “Thank you for this, Caroline. We’ll be in touch tomorrow.”
Dixon kept her eyes on Taylor. “Right.” She turned sharply and walked to the door. She opened it and stepped out, then turned back to them. “I’m house number seven. Your next-door neighbor.”
Brodie said, “You should have brought a casserole.”
Dixon did not smile. “I brought you something better.”
“Right.”
She lingered a moment, something else on her mind. Then she said, “I was personally involved in developing and testing the D-17 software over a period of years. Nothing even approaching what happened to Major Ames has ever happened before or was ever in danger of happening. Then Ames takes this one unit out late at night on three occasions, does whatever he does, attempts to cover his tracks, and then the bot malfunctions and kills him. The motive might be unclear, but to me it’s pretty obvious who was responsible for Roger’s death.” Her eyes drifted to Taylor. “And I don’t need to be a criminal investigator to understand that.”
Brodie said, “Good night, Caroline.”
