Megan knew it was going to be a long meeting soon as she walked into Griffin's office, just by the look on the Colonel's face. Dr. West was already present with his laptop.

"I just got off the phone with the bloody President," Griffin jabbed a hand at her for emphasis.

"How did it go, sir?" Megan sat down.

"He's pissed," Griffin rubbed his forehead, "A GORGON attack on our military-industrial complex on US soil... he wants to nuke all the likely places their high command might be located."

"I take our European allies are less enthused with the idea," Megan guessed.

"You can say that," grimaced Griffin, "Vienna would get most of the fallout. Anyway... let's get this meeting rolling. Agent Murphy, you go first... all updates on Patient Zero."

Megan nodded, "My source at Cardiff High reports a dramatic improvement in academic performance soon after the Brookhaven Incident..."

"Why wasn't this brought to my attention at once, Agent Murphy?" Griffin growled.

"It takes a while for such a trend in school work to become apparent, sir," explained Megan, "test scores and grades need to accumulate over time to show a pattern. My source waited to be sure before confirming it at last Friday's weekly check-in. There was no evidence of superhuman ability, nothing beyond what a dedicated student might achieve. Nothing to justify contacting me.This was noteworthy solely because of Patient Zero's poor academic record."

"Go on," Griffin grunted.

"That was basically it, sir," Megan shrugged, "until Patient Zero was injured by GORGON's attack."

"What the heck was he doing there anyway?" demanded Griffin, "And why would GORGON single him out? They... she can't possibly have figured out that Patient Zero exists. He's done nothing to draw attention if your source is to be believed."

"Patient Zero was invited on a tour of the Fuller factory," Megan elaborated, "apparently he's a friend of Fuller's daughter at school. There's no reason to think GORGON knew of his existence. He just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time."

"A coincidence?" Griffin scoffed, "no such thing in this business."

"It's not necessarily a coincidence, Colonel," Jonathan suggested, flashing another of his devastating smiles at Megan, "even if GORGON didn't target him specifically."

"Try to make sense, Dr. West," Griffin said testily, his social tolerance on a tight leash today.

"I've been going over the transcripts of Meg... Agent Murphy's interviews with the witnesses," Jonathan continued, looking at his laptop, "including Patient Zero. It appears that the GORGON-compromised drone was triggered immediately after a conversation between Patient Zero and a Dr. Masha Smirnov, Fuller's director of research. Patient Zero had just made a rather astute observation on statistical sampling - something that their design team had missed - that could potentially save them a lot of drones from being lost in combat..."

"Wait," Griffin stared, "you are telling me a bloody high school kid pointed out something that Fuller's entire R&D team missed? That... just doesn't happen. Are you sure we are not looking at a cognitive excursion? I'm this close to putting out an arrest warrant on the kid..."

"It's not uncommon for critical insights to fall through the cracks in any organisation," Jonathan shook his head, including this one, "departments grow increasingly specialized... and people are so intuitvely bad at Bayesian reasoning that they don't even recognize it. Clinical researchers, for example, hire statisticians to interpret their results for exactly that reason."

"Hmm," Griffin didn't look entirely convinced, "you are saying the drone..."

"...attacked him because Patient Zero was helping Fuller improve the survival rating on those drones," Jonathan nodded, "GORGON wasn't interested in just doing collateral damage... they were going after Fuller's brightest. We can't be certain, since the compromised drone erased itself when captured. But the scenario I'm leaning towards is a conventional targeting software wrapped around a neural net. The targeting criteria would be activated by problem solving keywords. The neural net would take over to pursue the target after that. Based on Patient Zero's testimony it appears to be a biological neural net pasted onto the drone processors. "

"Biological?" Griffin raised an eyebrow.

"Something like a Tiger beetle," Jonathan nodded, "used to high speed hunting on ground, but capable of jumping in the air when necessary."

"Why was the Army helicopter attacked?" demanded Griffin.

"Probably because the insect neural net mistook the helicopter for a competeing predator," shrugged Jonathan, "the helicopter was hovering over Patient Zero. It might have appeared like a dragon fly trying to steal its kill."

"Sybilline," hissed Griffin, "this is her handiwork... I didn't realize she could write minds... only read them."

"Seems to be a hithero unknown aspect of her ability," Jonathan nodded, looking unusually grave, "but that could simply be because there aren't many computing platforms that can host a fully functioning mind. The Fuller drones are state of art in that regard, and even they can't support anything more than the most primitive examples in nature. I have revised my threat analysis. "

Griffin was silent for a minute, staring off into space. Megan and Jonathan knew better than to interrupt.

"Could Sybilline predict Patient Zero's behavior?" Griffin asked.

"That's the question," smiled Jonathan, "she can usually predict the vector sum of our response... except that Patient Zero's newfound academic excellence is most likely influenced by the Incident. And Sybilline cannot possibly predict extra-terrestrial intervention... the drone would eventually have activated when the Fuller team rectified their oversight... but the GORGON attack probably precipitated weeks before Sybilline would have expected."

"She knows now," exhaled Griffin, "the bloody drone acted like a trip wire... if Sybilline didn't know about Patient Zero before she certainly knows now."

Jonathan nodded muttering, "...from within her kingdom the Queen of GORGON sees all..."

"What the heck are you blathering about?" frowned Griffin.

"Oh... I was just paraphrasing Saruman, my favorite fantasy character of all time," Jonathan looked slightly embarrased, then exclaimed as Megan and Griffin stared at him baffled, "Oh Come On... you must have seen the Lord Of The Rings movies..."

"Oh grow up, Dr. West," Griffin muttered disgustedly.

"If Sybilline has learned of Patient Zero his life could be in danger," mused Megan, "do we grab the kid?"

"Not so fast," Griffin said thoughtfully, "If we grab him now, he isn't much use to us. I want to exploit the fact that Sybilline can't predict his actions... use it to throw her off... maybe even resume covert operations. It's not like the Joint Chiefs are going to act on recommendations from some kid who is barely superhuman. But if we preserve his agency... let him influence minor events that we then use to time our covert ops...

"Not a bad plan," admitted Jonathan, looking somewhat aghast, "but, Colonel, that'll just push him up on GORGON's hit list even faster."

"Probably," nodded Griffin, "but perhaps GORGON can be discouraged from assassinating him... if we update NATO's Deadman Protocol to include Patient Zero."

"What," blurted both Megan and Jonathan simultaneously, looking at each other startled. Megan continued, "You think the President will agree to include individuals as threshold criteria within the Protocol?"

"He will if I recommend it," Griffin responded, "Patient Zero isn't just an individual... he's a weaponized dice. Even a couple of successful covert missions against GORGON might break the stalemate."

"That will only delay the inevitable," warned Jonathan, "once your weaponized dice begins to threaten GORGON's survival they will take him out... nukes or no nukes."

"Patient Zero will have served his purpose by then," Griffin shrugged, and then continued at Jonathan's shocked expression, "don't be a bleeding heart Dr. West... we'll grab the kid if it comes to that."

"I withdraw my objection," Jonathan muttered after a pause.

"You do?" blurted Megan, "I thought I was supposed to be the bad cop here."

"I hate to say this, but the Colonel is right," Jonathan replied, "Putting an end to Sybilline just became a whole lot more urgent. She has been playing us the whole time... every strategic response against her... she has manipulated us into it."

"Now that's paranoid talk," scoffed Griffin, "GORGON is reeling from our Balkan operations."

"That campaign has also stimulated the most agressive innovation in weapons tech since World War Two," retorted Jonathan, "specifically smart drones with the processors capable of hosting the most advanced neural nets ever seen on silicon. She's using our military-industrial complex to do her research for her. We have access to the best AI hardware labs anywhere in the world. She does not."

"Why?" spat Griffin.

"With due respect Colonel," Jonathan said earnestly, "I don't think you understand what Sybilline really is. We've never faced an enemy like her. She's an ensemble intelligence... all the thousands of brains she has consumed over the years... she has access to all their expertise... in a sense she is what she eats. And I can guess what her next step is. She wants hardware capable of hosting human minds. If you think she's hard to contain now, wait till she has thousands of clones of her mind running faster than realtime in silicon... a sort of weak superintelligence."

"Bloody hell," muttered Griffin, "the President needs to know..."

"Weak superintelligence?" frowned Megan.

"A classification of possible minds," nodded Jonathan, "to distinguish it from strong superintelligence which would be fundamentally different from us, as our minds are from squirrels or insects. A weak superintelligence is still made of human minds, just running faster than realtime. Trust me, there's nothing weak about it. I recalculated Nash equilibria for such an antagonist... there aren't any equilibrium points. We will not survive if we let Sybilline upgrade."

"And we can't create more Patient Zeroes," Griffin said resignedly, "Dr. Hale reports that further attempts to create stable wormholes at 345 MeV have failed. You know what that implies..."

"...the strong superintelligences involved in Brookhaven or Protvino have no further interest in stablizing the connection on the other side," Megan nodded, "presumably because they have what they want for now... but what the heck do they want? Why aren't they invading our universe if they are so powerful? And what do we do about them?"

"Do about them?" there was no humor in Jonathan's laugh, "Nothing at all. It's impossible to outguess a strong superintelligence. We can speculate. Perhaps the wormhole lacks the bandwidth for these beings to squeeze through. There is a more ominous possibility that Earth is a battle ground for a Cold War of sorts. We know there are two superintelligences involved at the very atleast : Brookhaven and Protvino. They might not be willing to provoke direct confrontation from each other, but might very well be using Patient Zero and Sybilline as pawns in a game that might take years to resolve...and I can't imagine what that end game might look like."

"A Cold War?" Griffin stared, "between cosmic beings? Thanks for ruining my day, Dr. West."

"My pleasure, sir," grinned Jonathan.

There ought be a law against irresistible smiles from super handsome men, thought Megan grumpily before she caught herself.

END OF CHAPTER