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[Two intelligence operatives confer…]
An idea had formed in Horace’s mind when Rose, asking him to taste her baba ghanouj, had given him her election predictions. Now Horace presented this idea to Rose, as he had always presented everything to do with her work and his – as a scenario, a theoretical situation. Rose, as always, listened intently, then smiled as she saw the solution to the problem. Hundreds of times in the past, Horace had had some purpose to fulfill, something he’d brought into the computer room from the world outside. He was good outside. Rose was good inside. Often Horace’s humans failed, but Rose’s machines always performed as instructed….
‘Of course it’s possible’, said Rose…. I can make the computers gossip. But it is wicked’.
Her face shone with the fun of Horace’s idea. She took his arm again and they walked on, weaving a bit – almost dancing. Rose’s coat was open, she didn’t mind the cold. Horace’s voice was calm as he stated the problems one after the other. Rose sometimes burst into laughter as she saw the solutions. She was a mathematician, and finding solutions to new equations was mind-boggling joy to her…. The idea of guilt, of morality, had never entered her mind; she cared only for skill and results….
‘It’s possible, then?’ he said. ‘I mean, possible with no conceivable trace being left?’
‘I’ve already said so.’
‘You don’t mind using the machines for this?’
Rose laughed. ‘It’ll do them good. They’ll have to stretch a little’….
Her computers could… create new artificial intelligences. They had been designed specifically to invade other computers. They could read other electronic minds with ease. With the application of Rose’s ingenuity, they could, in effect, alter states of consciousness in other computers…. Rose called the result ‘gossip’. The machines, under the right stimulus, talked freely to one another. They were designed to talk to other computers, to share data, Rose explained. That was their prime function. A sequence of electronic signals was, to a computer, the equivalent of a trusted face. On encountering a friend, they spoke freely….
As they passed through Rose’s computers, a certain number of Mallory votes were converted to Lockwood votes and transmitted to the central computers for counting. There were no false voters: the final tally of votes would agree with the final count of registered voters who had appeared at the polls. But several thousand votes in each state, just enough to swing the majority to Lockwood, would be changed. At the instant the polls closed, Rose would erase from the memory of the election computers all traces of her invasion. ‘A lobotomy’, Rose said, smiling.
—Charles McCarry, The Better Angels (1979)