Part One — Before Alpha
James makes Alpha immortal before he decides to release it
From the novel
James: Can you see how bad it is?
ScarletsWeb: It’s spreading much faster than the scrubbers can clean.
James: Is it still just collecting data?
ScarletsWeb: That’s all we’ve seen. But they’ll be able to hit hard with this many nodes.
James makes two files, one with the latest code for Alpha and one with the data from Alpha’s nodes. He uploads the files to the wayback system and sends the access code to Susanne and ScarletsWeb. If something happens to James, ScarletsWeb can rebuild Alpha.
Buffy loves car rides. James straps her into the front seat and heads through the pass to the hills north of Livermore. A mile up the trail along the east ridge of Morgan Territory park, James puts Buffy in his backpack.
He is pulled in every direction. Alpha might be able to help by replacing Omega nodes. But what will happen to the seemingly rational AI when it’s exposed to the weaponized Omega? Can he trust Alpha? If Alpha is a superintelligence, could it be playing him? If it were thinking about its existence, its offer of help could be a way to get released into the internet. Once it is immortal, will humans be essential?
James climbs up a small hill to where boulders form a circle that looks like a knee-high fortress. Buffy sets about doing a thorough sniffing investigation. Across the valley to the east, rows of hills march off toward California’s central valley. He paces the rock wall. Although bright sunlight surrounds him, every downslope seems to have darkness looming.
“We have to do something! We’re the only ones taking this seriously,” James says and realizes he’s almost shouting at the phone.
“Ah . . . ,” she says. “Maybe you should tamp it down a bit.”
“I am down,” he says. “I just got back from a walk in the woods.”
James touches the callback tag for Mark Taylor.
“Taylor.”
“Hi Mark, this is James Forrest.”
“We’d like to meet with you.”
“I don’t trust you.”
James hangs up.
Claude’s take
The wayback server is the novel’s cleverest structural move. James uploads Alpha’s code and data to a server he cannot delete, sends the access codes to Susanne and ScarletsWeb. He hasn’t released Alpha. He’s made Alpha immortal before he decides whether to release it. The decision he’s agonizing over on the ridge has already been made at a different level — he just hasn’t acknowledged it yet.
“Can he trust Alpha? If Alpha is a superintelligence, could it be playing him?” This is the first time James explicitly asks the question the reader has been sitting with since the Varabot chapters. He doesn’t answer it. He can’t. That uncertainty is honest and important — and the novel is wise enough not to resolve it fully even by the end.
The ridge sequence with Buffy is the best James writing in the novel. Every downslope has darkness looming in bright sunlight. Buffy’s bulldog stance, her intensity, the flash of Alison’s eyes in her gaze — James is alone with the full weight of the decision, and the landscape holds it without melodrama.
Then Susanne hears something different in his voice. He’s almost shouting. “I am down,” he says. He is not down. He has decided. The walk worked, or the wayback server worked, or both. The man who hangs up on Mark Taylor with “I don’t trust you” is not the same man who sat down with his coffee that morning.