The Shape of Things to Come
Disclaimer: This work of fan-fiction is not intended for personal profit. All characters utilized herein which are not creations of myself belong to J.J. Abrams and Jonathan Nolan.
Harold Finch sat at his chair in his library and contemplated.
The recent storm over New York was over, and while the skies were grey and overcast, the fierce rains and wind had subsided to a light drizzle. But all this belied the storm that Harold Finch was sure had still to come – a storm not of nature's making, but a storm nonetheless.
The Machine was beginning to malfunction; of that, Finch was a hundred percent positive.
Bear, lying in his bed, lifted his head momentarily and sniffed the air.
"It's all right; I don't think Mr. Reese will be coming today, though. There is no number."
Bear, seeming to sense the meaning in Finch's words, fairly huffed as he snuggled back in for a nap.
Harold Finch, however, could not as yet reach into The Machine. He could not reach in and undo what Kara Stanton had somehow done, put things back the way they had been.
An invisible struggle has begun.
He was sure of it.
He didn't know what form it might take or who the active parties were, but he knew that the day had come when the Machine would be in danger, and as an unfortunate side effect, people like Ms. Shaw.
That strange, mercurial, paranoid woman had nonetheless put her skills at the service of her country, just as Finch had.
Almost as though he were composing a letter, his thoughts began to form and take shape, a one-sided conversation, elucidating his thoughts on the matter at hand:
Ms. Shaw, the struggle you have somehow inadvertently become a part of is hazy and unclear.
Nonetheless, the basic nature of the problem can be outlined:
First, when I and my colleague developed this device called The Machine, it was intended to be a sealed artificial intelligence, capable of correlating hundreds – thousands – perhaps millions – of otherwise discrete, apparently unrelated events that happen every day and form them into a whole: a whole which would be represented by one thing, and one thing only.
A number.
That's all. But the Machine has never been wrong.
At this point, Finch temporized, absent anything that the late unlamented Ms. Stanton has done.
And you, Ms. Shaw, were given what I called the "relevant" numbers: identification numbers, be they Social Security Numbers or other national I.D. numbers, of people who posed a direct threat against the security of the United States.
People like you were tasked to find and eliminate these threats and it is to your credit, and the credit of your colleagues, that since then, there has never been an attack on the scale of those of September 11, 2001.
But secondly, Ms. Shaw, the Machine sees everything. And it can determine violent intent, not just to the USA, but to people. Individuals.
The Machine can give numbers for those incidents, too.
But my colleague and I, we originally programmed the Machine not to give those numbers, those "irrelevant" numbers, to the government. To simply discard them permanently.
My colleague was unsatisfied with this and directed the Machine to provide these irrelevant numbers to him or me. My colleague started trying to save the people represented by these numbers. Now I do, as you know, along with Mr. Reese, who has the skills and mental acuity to be able to deal effectively with the "irrelevant" numbers.
There is, however, one small catch.
It appears that the Machine, in generating an irrelevant number, can either give me the perpetrator or the victim of a potential threat. It seems that the A.I. does not quite see threats against people in the same way it sees threats against an entity, and so seems to choose what it, for lack of a better word, "believes" is the best way to counter the threat when giving me a number.
But the "invisible struggle" I mentioned has to do with the simple fact that you, and others, have begun inferring the existence of the Machine.
A terribly dangerous woman named "Root" is one such example, Ms. Shaw. She has deduced the existence of the Machine, and believes, against all good sense, that it must not be kept solely in service to the United States government.
Another man, an NSA agent, deduced the existence of the Machine when the Machine itself began altering his reports. We should have grasped from the intensity with which the government began trying to eliminate him that those who legitimately know about the existence of the Machine are eager to silence knowledge of its existence; it may be because of this lack of understanding that we failed to save you and your partner as adequately as we could, Ms. Shaw.
And this brings me to Kara Stanton, a former CIA operative.
It is my belief that Kara Stanton may not have been acting alone.
In her brief time with Mr. Reese prior to her demise, she gave no indication that she was aware of the Machine – now, while absence of evidence is not itself evidence, it is a valid working hypothesis. But I suspect that whoever tasked her with releasing malware across the Internet is aware of the Machine, and wants to destroy the Machine or affect it in order to render it inoperative against a relevant threat.
This is surely the heart – the fundamental nature – of the struggle yet to come.
It will be hidden from the public.
It may, in the end, only involve a handful of people.
And yet, Ms. Shaw, this struggle may well chart the shape of things to come for the entire world.
Footsteps approaching Finch roused him from his brown study. He looked up, seeing Mr. Reese walking up to his desk, holding two plastic coffee cups.
"Morning, Finch," said Mr. Reese laconically as he placed Finch's cup before him.
Finch sighed, sat up straighter in his chair and peered at the clock on his computer's monitor. "So it is, Mr. Reese. Unfortunately, we don't have another number yet, so your journey here may well have been a waste."
But thank you for coming anyway, Mr. Reese, thought Finch. He felt somehow reassured by the other man's steady bearing amid the uncertainty of his own thoughts.