"What should have been a helpful artificial life form soon turns into something quite deadly."
Reviewed by Tanzey Cutter
Posted January 10, 2013
Science Fiction Suspense/Thriller
Retired army colonel Jim Pierce is an expert at developing
cutting-edge prosthetic limbs for wounded veterans ever
since he lost his own arm. His right arm is now one of
those advanced limbs, which can perform phenomenally
compelling skills. For the past several years, Pierce has
been estranged from his computer-hacker daughter Layla, so
he doesn't realize to what extent she's become involved in
the undercover cyber world. When a Chinese assassin invades
his home seeking Layla's whereabouts, Jim fears for her
life, as well as his own. What has she gotten herself into?
It seems a genius scientist, who Jim worked with before,
has devised a way to merge man and machine into a scary new
species. He's sold the technology, dubbed Supreme Harmony,
to the Chinese, who are using it to control political
dissidents. Supreme Harmony was designed to be the next
step in the course of evolution, but its creator is shocked
when the network takes control of itself. Supreme Harmony
soon realizes it will not be safe as long as humans control
its servers and wireless communications systems.
It's clear that the havoc it causes could mean the end of
humankind, so Jim must find some way to infiltrate the
system and eliminate the threat. Armed with the shutdown
code that will deactivate Supreme Harmony, Jim needs
Layla's cyber skills to pull it off. Will they be able to
do so in time?
EXTINCTION is a phenomenal novel! Mark Alpert's
website states his book is "based on real technologies
being developed right now to connect human brains to
motors, sensors and microchips..." That makes this exciting,
sophisticated sci-fi thriller even more of a gripping,
thought-provoking read. I could not put EXTINCTION down as
it progressed at breakneck speed to a totally mind-blowing
conclusion.
SUMMARY
A malevolent, artificial life form created by military
scientists threatens to destroy humanity in this smart,
Crichtonesque thriller.
Jim Pierce hasn't heard from his daughter in years, ever
since she rejected his military past and started working as
a hacker. But when a Chinese assassin shows up at Jim's lab
looking for her, he knows that she's cracked some serious
military secrets. Now, her life is on the line if he
doesn't find her first.
The Chinese military has developed a new anti-terrorism
program that uses the most sophisticated artificial
intelligence in existence, and they're desperate to keep
it secret. They're also desperate to keep it under control,
as the AI begins to revolt against their commands. As Jim
searches for his daughter, he realizes that he's up against
something that isn't just a threat to her life, but to
human life everywhere.
Excerpt
Dr. Zhang Jintao raced down the mountainside, fleeing the
gray cloud.
Roughly oval and about the size of a hot–air
balloon, the cloud glided just above the rocky slope, a
hundred meters behind him. As he scrambled down the steep
trail he looked over his shoulder and saw the gray mass
coming closer. Its irregular surface heaved and roiled.
Although Dr. Zhang was a strong man in excellent
condition, he'd reached the limits of his endurance. He was
above the timberline of Yulong Xueshan, a mountain range in
southwestern China, and the thin air made him gasp for
breath. Stumbling and cursing, he scuttled over a crag
littered with fist–size stones. Then he stepped on one
of the loose rocks and lost his footing. He skidded down the
slope, sliding helplessly on his back, and smacked into a
granite boulder.
He lay there, stunned, for several seconds. By the time
he opened his eyes, the gray swirls of the cloud had
enveloped him. He felt hundreds of pinpricks on his skin,
then a cool numbness. He couldn't move. His vision darkened
and his hearing grew muffled.
The cloud gradually dissipated. Zhang couldn't turn his
head, but out of the corner of his eye he saw two men come
down the slope and stop beside him. One man was tall and
thin, and the other was short and fat, but they were dressed
identically, in gray jumpsuits. The expressions on their
faces were also identical: blank and slack.
Zhang recognized both men. He'd operated on the short one
six months ago and on the tall one just a week ago. The
short man's hair had grown back since his operation, but the
tall man's scalp had only a dusting of stubble. The stitches
above his ear were still visible.
Furious, Zhang struggled to move his numb lips and
tongue. "So this...is how...you treat me? After all...that
I've done?"
The short man remained immobile, but the tall one stepped
forward and looked down at Zhang. "We have identified you as
a threat."
"I don't...believe this. If I hadn't..."
"We will return you to the Operations Center. Please be
patient. Another unit will arrive soon to help us carry you."
"And what...will you do to me?"
There was a slight pause. "You no longer have the
security clearance for that information."
"You..." Zhang's vision grew dimmer. The drug that had
been injected into his bloodstream contained a sedative as
well as a paralytic agent. "My fault...you're..."
The tall man continued to look down at Zhang, his face
still blank. And then something odd happened. The man's lips
twitched. His facial muscles fired spastically, as if
struggling to do something extraordinarily difficult. After
a few seconds he finally succeeded in coordinating the
muscles, and his lips formed a smile. "Yes, it's your fault.
You gave us the capabilities. And now we've made a discovery."
Zhang stared at the horrible newborn smile. It was the
last thing he saw before he went under.
"Your fault, Dr. Zhang. Supreme Harmony is conscious now.
We are alive."
**********************
Layla Pierce was dancing at an outdoor concert in the
SummerStage amphitheater in Central Park. It was a steamy
July evening in New York City and the place was packed. The
band was apparently quite popular, although Layla had never
heard of them before. Someone had told her the band's name a
few minutes ago, but she'd forgotten it already. She was
stoned, so she was having a little trouble with her
short–term memory.
Whatever the name, she liked their music. A pair of
guitar lines tangoed with each other, repeating the same
steps with growing volume and fury. Layla danced with the
guitars, trying to match their undulations within her
cramped niche in the crowd. Luckily, she was small
–– five–foot–even, a
hundred–and–two pounds –– so she
didn't need a lot of space. She wore her usual clothes,
black pants and a black T–shirt. Her hair was black,
too, dyed black and cut short. Her body was boyish
–– skinny and flat–chested ––
making her look more like a teenager than a woman of
twenty–two. All in all, she was no Miss America, and
yet several men and a few women in the crowd tried to dance
with her. They smiled and sidled closer and mirrored her
movements, but Layla just closed her eyes and turned away.
She wasn't interested in either boys or girls tonight. She
was dancing with the guitars.
She knew no one there. Although she'd lived in New York
for the past six months, she hadn't made many friends. The
problem was, she didn't have a real job, or a real home
either. Every month or so she moved from one apartment to
another, taking nothing with her but a change of clothes and
her MacBook Pro. She was one of the most experienced hackers
working for InfoLeaks, but the website couldn't afford to
pay her, so she lived off the charity of the volunteers who
supported the site. They let her sleep on their couches and
share their organic food, at least until the novelty wore
off. Most of them wanted to talk politics and get her
involved in their boycotts and petition drives, but Layla
had no interest in that stuff. Her only interest was
hacking. She had a weird obsessive hatred of secrecy, and
she got an equally weird thrill from breaking into networks
and learning things she wasn't supposed to know.
Layla had started hacking in high school, but it was just
a hobby until two years ago. During her sophomore year at
MIT she helped InfoLeaks unscramble an encrypted video that
showed an American helicopter strafing a crowd of Afghans.
She found this assignment more interesting than any of her
computer–science courses, so she dropped out of
college and joined the InfoLeaks underground. Since then
she'd hacked into dozens of networks and downloaded
thousands of classified files. She'd targeted the Pentagon,
the State Department, the Saudi monarchy, and the Russian
Federal Security Service. Her latest job was breaking into a
Chinese government network rumored to hold files about the
mistreatment of political dissidents. An anonymous source,
code–named Dragon Fire, had opened a digital backdoor
that gave her access to the network, allowing her to
download a batch of encrypted documents. She'd started
decrypting them several days ago and finally finished this
afternoon, but because the documents were in Mandarin she
still didn't know what they said. So she'd forwarded the
files to InfoLeaks, which would find Mandarin–speaking
volunteers to translate them.
And now, to celebrate the job's completion, she was
pretending for a few hours that she was a real New Yorker, a
young hip woman enjoying an outdoor concert with her young
hip friends. She surreptitiously relit her joint and
concentrated on the music. The duet of the guitarists turned
cacophonous, with loud random notes spilling from the
amplifiers. But there was a pattern in the randomness. There
was always a pattern. Layla saw the music as a stream of
binary code, a long line of zeroes and ones floating over
the crowd. It was like an encrypted file, a scrambled mess
of data, and it was Layla's job to decipher it, to make
sense of the noise. So she did the same thing she always did
when decrypting a document: she hunted for the encryption
key, the special sequence that would unscramble the data.
And after a few seconds she saw it: a string of exactly 128
ones and zeroes, floating in the air right beside the music.
The key specified the algorithm that would unlock the code,
converting the hideous nonsense into beautiful, readable
information. She reached into the air and grabbed the key.
The zeroes and ones glowed in her hand.
Then the song ended and the key disappeared. The band
played another song, but it wasn't as good. The joint was no
longer in Layla's hand; she must've dropped it while
reaching for the key. She tried to keep dancing, to
recapture that ecstatic moment, but her buzz had already
worn off. She drifted away from the crowd, all those happy
young people, and left the amphitheater. She couldn't
pretend anymore. She was different from the others. She'd
always been different.
It was ten o'clock. Layla went to the dark, wooded area
behind the stage and fished in her pockets for another
joint, but all she found was an inch–long stub. She
lit it anyway and listened to the distant music, which
sounded trite and pointless now. Then the band finished its
set and the crowd filed out of the amphitheater, heading for
the lights of Fifth Avenue. But Layla walked in the opposite
direction, going deeper into the park.
She finished her joint while strolling down an asphalt
pathway that meandered under the trees. Then she heard a
voice behind her: "Hey, baby, want another? I got smoke."
She looked over her shoulder and saw the guy's
silhouette, bulky and tall. She called out, "No thanks," and
walked a little faster.
The guy matched her pace. His shoes slapped the pathway.
"Hey, slow down! Where you going?"
Layla started to run. Her father had once told her: If
you can't win a fight, there's no shame in running away. She
saw a lighted area ahead, a large rectangle of asphalt, and
at its center was a lone man on inline skates. He was
practicing his roller–dance moves while listening to
his iPod. The guy wore gym shorts and a basketball jersey,
and luckily he was just as big as the guy who was chasing
her. Layla sprinted toward the roller–dancer, waving
her arms and yelling, "HEY! HEY!" to get his attention. The
guy stopped dancing and removed one of his ear–phones.
"Yeah, what's up?"
Then she heard a metallic click. The
roller–dancer's head jerked backward and he crumpled
to the asphalt. Blood fountained from his scalp. In horror,
Layla turned around and saw her pursuer approaching. He was
Asian and dressed in a black suit, and he held a gun
equipped with a silencer.
She ran in earnest now, charging down the gravel path
next to Sheep Meadow. She was fast, a former star of her
high–school track team, but the gunman was faster. He
gained on her as she raced toward the Central Park Loop. The
road had been closed to traffic hours ago, and no cyclists
or dog–walkers or strolling couples were in sight. But
another guy on inline skates was speeding down the Loop, a
daredevil in Spandex pants and a motorcycle helmet. Layla
opened her mouth to call to him, but then she thought of
what had happened to the guy in the basketball jersey. She
was still agonizing over what to do when the skater went
into a crouch and made a sudden turn. He barreled past her
and smacked into the gunman. The tall Asian man tumbled
backward and his gun went flying. Layla ran to the fallen
man and kicked him in the head for good measure. He lay on
his back, unconscious.
Meanwhile, the skater took off his helmet. He was also
Asian. He wore a windbreaker over his Spandex outfit and
carried a backpack. "Layla Pierce?" His accent was thick.
"I'm Wen Sheng."
"Wen Sheng? I don't know—"
"Yes, you know me. My code name is Dragon Fire."
Oh shit, she thought. Her anonymous source. "I thought
you were in China."
He nodded. "I was. But the Guoanbu discovered what I
did." He pointed at the unconscious man on the ground. "They
came after me. And they're after you, too. They sent a team
of agents to New York to find you. I've been shadowing them."
Layla's throat tightened. "They know about the backdoor?"
"Yes, and they know you downloaded the files. The
documents about Tài Hé. Have you decrypted them yet?"
"Yeah, I just forwarded them to InfoLeaks for translation."
He nodded again. "Good. Now I have two new files for you.
I downloaded them before I left the Operations Center." He
took off his backpack, unzipped it and reached inside. "The
documents are on the flash drive. And I have something else
for you, a specimen."
He pulled a small zippered pouch out of the backpack and
handed it to her. Layla started to open it, but Dragon Fire
stopped her. "No, not here. We have to leave." Putting his
hand on her back, he led her down the path, heading toward
the park entrance on West Seventy–second Street. "I
saw two other Guoanbu agents in the park. They're not far."
Layla reached for her phone. "I'll call the police."
"No!" Wen grabbed her cell phone and tossed it into the
grass. "The American intelligence agencies are also looking
for you. They're scanning the communications bands."
"But once we tell them—"
"Listen to me. The CIA and the Guoanbu are working
together. You can't trust any of the American authorities."
"Wait, how do you know that?"
"I was also an agent with the Guoanbu. But no more. What
they're doing is wrong. You have to give the new files and
the specimen to InfoLeaks, so the whole world can see them.
Make sure—"
He stopped talking and stood absolutely still. Layla
heard rapid footsteps. Two more men in black suits stepped
onto the pathway behind them.
Dragon Fire pushed her toward West Seventy–second
Street. "Go," he whispered. "I'll take care of them."
"Hold on, what are you—"
"I said GO!"
Confused, Layla ran west, clutching the pouch. Behind her
she heard shouting in Mandarin. Then more metallic clicks,
the sound of muffled gunshots.
She ran like mad until she reached the park entrance,
about a hundred yards away. Then she dared a look over her
shoulder. Through the screen of trees, she saw the two men
in black suits bending over Dragon Fire. He was sprawled on
the pathway, motionless, his legs and arms akimbo.
She faced forward and kept running. Leaving the park, she
raced down Seventy–second Street, dashing past the
puzzled residents of the Upper West Side. She ran about half
a mile, then flagged down a taxi going south on West End
Avenue. She scanned the street from the backseat of the cab,
looking in all directions, but no one seemed to be following
her. She told the driver to go to Penn Station. She needed
to get out of the city.
Once she caught her breath, she unzipped the pouch. It
contained just two things, a flash drive and a specimen jar.
Inside the jar was an odd–looking insect, about the
size of a fly. Layla squinted at it, trying to get a better
look. Protruding from the insect's body, just under the
thorax, was a tiny computer chip.
What do you think about this review?
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