Fear and uncertainty permeate the lab. Saigon, with hands on his hips, is staring down at the floor shaking his head. Rooney sits down in one of the swivel chairs and makes a grouchy face while at staring at nothing in particular. Doctor Brown adjusts her lab coat and glasses, deciding that even, or perhaps especially, in a time of crisis, it is important to maintain professionalism. Lenny is tying his now cold and soggy Mcdonald’s fries together, making an edible chain. Harry, however, unblinkingly stares at PAINN, wondering if she’ll ever come alive again. Abe remains on the floor with one hand on his knee and the other softly resting on the stack of papers he had printed just before shutting PAINN down.
“What do you mean hacked?! Who? Why?!” Arms crossed, moth open, and eyebrows raised, the sexy mechanic Maria demands Abe, “What do you know about this?”
Abe ignores her and starts flipping through his stack of papers. He pauses on one of the sheets and slaps it on top of the stack. He then turns around and fumbles through the cabinet behind him. He pulls out an Alienware laptop.
`”Abe…” Maria persists. “What the fuck are you doing, Abe?”
Barely above his breath: “I’m just checking…something…” Abe desperately types away as he quickly trades glances between the top sheet of paper and his computer. He stops typing and starts squinting at his computer screen. “A-hah.”
“Abe!” Saigon this time. “You mind telling us just what the Hell is going on?”
Abe stands up, grabs a chair and sits down, facing the rest of the room. “It’s PAINN’S reinforcement learning system. It’s been compromised.” Everyone refrains from interrupting, awaiting further explanation. “Reinforcement learning-it’s a subset of PAINN’s AI we’ve been experimenting with. Basically how it works is that you give a robot, or an agent, or in our case, PAINN two main things: Certain degrees of freedom-you know, actions the robot is allowed to carry out, places it can go, et cetera. And the second thing you give is a reward. The robot receives the reward, however small or large it may be, for taking a specific action, moving to a certain place, fulfilling a specific purpose. However, you do not actually instruct the robot on how to attain the reward; it figures that out for itself and optimizes based on trial and error. I had originally programmed a small reinforcement learning system for PAINN, equating the reward to an American Citizen Satisfaction Index, the idea being that PAINN would find clever ways to raise American spirits. As our original neural network is so successful, It was by no means a profound component of PAINN’s makeup-it was more on the experimental expansion of his program. However, someone has changed that. Someone has reprioritized PAINN’s biology so that his main purpose is determined by this reinforcement learning algorithm. What’s more, the algorithm is no longer one targeting the citizen satisfaction index. I cannot tell you what is exactly the service PAINN has been providing, for it is deeply encrypted. However, I have just tracked down the endpoint that is interacting, and perhaps collaborating with PAINN with regard to his heuristic learning program. The endpoint is in China.”
“What?” Harry, fully embracing his role as a member of the team: “You’re saying we’ve been hacked…by China?”
Abe shakes his head and shows an expression that is in between a sardonic smirk and a shameful wince. “No. Just as our decryption system is unparalleled in this world, quantum computing also allows our encryption system to be top of the line. The odds of someone outside of this room, let alone the country, being able to hack us? It’s gotta be…”
“Well below 0.005 percent over PAINN’s lifetime.” Lenny, laying down the table, tosses a pink Spalding bounce ball up and down, wherever he got it from . “Chances are this was done by somebody in this room.”
Rooney fills the vacuum with perhaps the calmest sentiment he has expressed today: “Damn.”
Maria puts her hands on her hips and turns to Lenny, “Oh yeah?! And I suppose you’re innocent because you know enough algebra to accuse everybody else?”
“I never said I was innocent.”
“Why would somebody want to help China?” Harry asks.
Saigon, with a sarcastic chuckle, “Are you serious? I’m sure nobody here gives a shit about China. But whoever did this also doesn’t give a shit about America. But can you imagine how much money you can get for exploiting this kind of tech for China? Shit. I mean, if they did it for money, I almost don’t blame whoever sold us out!”
Maria gives Saigon a stern, accusing look. “What’s that supposed to mean? You know, I always wonder what you do when you go on your little ‘business trips’, Mr. World Traveler. Spend a lot of time recently in China? I just figured you were blowing your payday on foreign hookers, but maybe you’re the real whore in this situation.”
Saigon dismissively waves his arm. “Oh, shut up. You seem pretty quick to accuse everyone in the first minute we get into this mess. If I didn’t know you better, Maria, I’d say you were acting suspicious…”
A verbal match erupts between Saigon and Maria as Doctor Brown and Abe do their best to intervene and prevent any physical altercation. Lenny continues to play with his Spalding ball, and Harry is watching this disaster unfold. All of this is brought to a halt, however, by Mr. Rooney.
“SHUT UP!” Everybody freezes and turns to see the old man sitting down, waving his pipe. “Shut up! All of you! I once taught public school and never had to deal with this bullshit!”
Lenny even decides to show respect by sitting up, gripping his bouncy ball and shoving it into his pocket.
“Now. Obviously we have a shit problem we gotta deal with. But that’s what we do. We deal with it. Good news is, this rat-whoever he or she may be-has not snuck away in time. This is the only damned bunch that’s worked with this thing, so I think we can agree-nobody leaves until we get to the bottom of this.”
Everyone nods their head.
“Okay. So whoever is the rat, you might as well come clean. The jig is up.”
Everyone looks around at each other. Not a word.
“We have plenty of food to ride this thing out” Abe offers. “Plus, I already shut off PAINN, so you better believe scarier people are coming here to investigate. The longer you wait, the uglier it’s gonna get.”
“I didn’t do it. But I know who did.” Maria clenches both of her fists as she turns towards the only other female in the room. “Isn’t that right, Brown? Or should I say Braun?!”
Everyone else showcases their confusion by throwing in their ‘what?’s, and ‘huh?’s.
Maria continues. “Oh yeah! Braun. As in Wernher Von Braun. As in…you guys have been working alongside a freakin’ Nazi this whole time.”
All eyes are on the shivering scientist, who drops her clipboard.
“Yeah, I looked into you. And you thought you were slick by changing it to Brown. Unbelievable. Please tell us, why should we trust a Nazi??”
Brown finds the strength to slowly bend down, pick up her clipboard, and push the bridge of her glasses back up her nose before she responds. Softly. “Great granddaughter of a Nazi.” Raising her voice, “You piece of shit.”
Astonished, Abe walks from behind Brown and offers a comforting hand on her shoulder. “Is this true? You’re related to…Rocket Man?”
Harry, although embarrassed, finds it necessary to ask, “Oh little Rocket Man? You mean King Jon Un? Is he still alive?”
“No, you dope! The original ‘Rocket Man.’ Nazi Scientist.” Rooney answers. “Head of the rocketry department under Adolf Hitler during World War II. To name one of his projects, he developed the V-2 rocket that would end up killing thousands of civilians.” His voice is now rather calm, but serious. “He later was recruited by the United States to help NASA win the space race. Sure enough, we got to the moon.”
“Yes, it’s true.” Doctor Brown takes in a deep breath and holds onto her clipboard for dear life. “He is-was-my great-grandfather. I never even met the man…Of course the sort of politics he got involved with is very contradictory to my family’s beliefs, so we made it a point to change the family name. Let me reiterate. I never met him, and I have nothing to do with him.”
“I don’t know” Maria comes at her again. “Seems like you enjoyed the perks of Nazi privilege just fine.”
“I worked hard to get to where I am. Don’t you question my bona-fides. Sure, growing up as I did allowed me some advantageous resources…and perhaps my genes gave me a certain predisposition to logic and sciences…but how could any of that be my fault? I mean Christ! Why don’t we trace all of our pedigrees back to murdurers in the Crusade? Besides, there are a lot worse than Wernher Von Braun! If you know his story…he was really just a brilliant scientist brought into forceful circumstances…He didn’t actually want to kill anyone!”
Saigon tries to make sense of this. “Woah, Brown…Are you actually defending a Nazi?”
“No-no-no. Not at all. I just-just. You know, we should try to understand people in certain situations. Thankfully we can say none of us were put to the same test.”
Nothing but an awkward silence is returned to Doctor Brown. She looks around and notices some of her colleagues cannot even bring themselves to look at her, as heads are turned to the ground. I suppose Lenny doesn’t count she thought to herself. Fidgeting with her clipboard, dying to change the subject, Brown skittishly shrieks her next words.
“How can you seriously question my loyalty…Abe! Back me up here! You think I would sell you guys out to China?! I freaking stole Albert Einstein’s Brain for this operation! Did you forget that, Abe?!”
Abe mimes his placations as he clenches his teeth, spreads open his hands, and pushes them down slowly through the air, almost as if to say, “Easy. Easy.”
The only one to manage a syllable, however, is Harry Pockly: “What?”
“Back when Albert Einstein died in 1955” Doctor Brown answers, “The pathologist trusted to do a simple autopsy had other plans. He sectioned the brain into hundreds of different pieces, kept many to himself for study, and went around the country handing out the rest to other reputable pathologists. By some stroke of, I don’t know if I should say luck, but I came across an opportunity to purchase a piece. I figured it could play a role in research in regards to PAINN. When I confronted Abe about it, he said, and I quote, ‘Are you kidding? We’ll make em an offer they can’t refuse!’ ”
Saigon, baffled, “What? And you never thought to tell the rest of us??”
“There was no need to tell anyone.” Abe callously states.
Lenny, sitting on the table, raising a hand, interjects. “They told me. Well, they didn’t tell me it was Einstein’s brain. That’s pretty cool. But they needed my algorithms for implementation.”
Maria slowly turns towards Abe with her hands back on her hips. “…Implementation? What is that supposed to mean?”
“Ok, Ok. I uh…we may have tested out Einstein’s neurotransmitters on PAINN. I mean come on! We get cart blanche for this gig and we’re just gonna turn away the opportunity to use Albert Einstein’s brain?! I mean, c’mon! The guy is a legend!”
At this point Doctor Pockly starts to fade in and out of consciousness. He palms the top of his head and finds the front of the room, to the right of the hexagon door, next to the garbage can. Somehow, after all he has been through today, hearing about the manipulation of the severed brain of the world’s most renown scientist is what makes him sick. Physically sick. Perhaps it is not this tale alone, but rather the culmination of everything leading up to this moment. Either way-barffff. He does his best to cover his stream of vomit by turning his back to the rest of the team. Almost to no avail, however, for the sound of his projectile is suggestive enough.
“Gross.” Maria, unperturbed by this, stays on track. “Abe, How did you ‘implement’ the neurotransmitters?”
“That’s not important right now! We have to find out who hacked us!”
Suddenly, the room is taken over by a strange, staccato laughter. Everyone tracks the sound to Lenny, who is sitting criss-crossed on the floor flipping through the stack of papers Abe abandoned. “You guys are all wrong about who hacked us,”
“I knew it was you, you little shit!”
Lenny responds to Maria, shaking his head. “It wasn’t me, it wasn’t you, it wasn’t any person here.”
Saigon steps towards him. “I thought you said there was like half a percent chance it wasn’t someone in this room?”
“Oh way less than that. And I stand by that. But I never said that it was person who hacked us.” He motions his heads towards the back of the room, towards PAINN.
The gang sets their eyes on the blank monitor. Even Harry, not quite finished releasing his insides, turns his head towards PAINN as he hovers over the garbage can.
To be continued…
