Becoming (Core Series Book 1)

by Ronnie Barnard

  A swoosh alerted the men to their freedom as a wall melted away to reveal the door. They grabbed John and dragged him, half-running, towards the hall. Carlos looked behind one last time, and found himself virtually staring Core straight in her slitted eyes. His face went white, and he retreated slowly out the door, his face forever looking into hers. Core mock-attacked and Carols fell backwards onto the ground with a cry. He crawled out ass-first, his eyes humongous, his sides heaving like bellows.

  “Don’t come back!” Core warned him. The other three was already dragging John up the tunnel as Carlos scrambled to his feet and ran out after them.

  Once he disappeared from sight, Core turned around and dissolved with a large grin on her face. “Yes! That will teach them” she shouted.

  Core’s room now boasted a high-tech, three dimensional tracking table that showed Carlos’ progress, as well as the status of the two nanolaks. Her nanolak was catching up to Damian’s fast—it would be only thirty-seven minutes until they met. Damian was now walking through farm land—he stopped from time to time, and then moved off again. Core walked over to Jason’s side when she heard him stir in the bed. His vitals were perfect, his breathing was normal, and the brain scanner was reporting increased brain activity.

  She had turned the drip off ten minutes ago to wake him. A cold feeling ran through her as he slowly journeyed towards consciousness—she was scared and excited at the same time. This would be the second time he saw her as herself. She wondered what he would think about her decision to keep him asleep, or about the model she had planted under his nose. The model for herself.... She wondered what she would tell him, or how much she should tell him.

  “Water,” Jason whispered with his eyes closed. His mouth felt dry, like sanding paper. He wished that someone would think of the poor injured man on the hospital bed and just drip a couple drops of water down his throat every now and again. Then he wouldn’t have to ask for it every time he woke.

  Every time he woke? How long have I been out?

  He did not have a headache—or any pain, for that matter. His back and muscles were terribly sore, but that was the worst of it. He tried to move his arms and legs. They felt stiff.

  “Here,” Core’s soft, husky voice soothed him. Jason felt a pull in his stomach. How was it that a computer tied him all up in knots? Because she is the smartest, sexiest, kindest, most valiant computer you’ve ever met. Jason groaned at his own vapidity.

  Did Core even have feelings? Every thread of intelligence told him that machines didn’t have feelings, but yet...he couldn’t deny that she responded emotionally during his escape. She showed fear, excitement, anger, empathy....

  He opened his eyes. Both opened, which was a pleasant surprise. Everything was out of focus and blurry, but he felt her hand under his head, pulling up. He lifted it with her help, and took a sip of water. The coolness soothed the dryness from his mouth—he thought of rain falling on the dry outback plains.

  Jason gently felt his face with his hands. There were no stitches on his lip, but he had a short beard. He quickly ran his tongue over his lips and felt a tiny bump near the right side of his mouth.

  “Most of your wounds have healed. The bullet holes closed up nicely, but are not completely healed,” she said, sitting next to the bed.

  His eyes finally focused. She was stunning.

  “Thank you, Core,” he said, sitting more upright. She quickly put her arm around his back, supporting him. “You are one of a kind. How long have I been out?” She smelled like sweet wild flowers. Her hair on his shoulder electrified him.

  “I kept you sedated for a week and a half. The human body heals faster when sleeping. I hope that you don’t mind?” she said. “Are you okay on your own? Should I put the bed up?” She seemed uneasy.

  “I think I can manage on my own.”

  “Okay. I will let go.” She stepped back, slightly hesitating, wishing he needed her help. She bit her lip, although seemed ready to give support if required. He felt that his balance was a tiny bit off, but nothing too major. “How are you feeling?” she asked.

  “Like I have been sleeping for a week and a half,” he chuckled.

  “Sorry,” she said, looking away.

  God she is beautiful. He had only seen her once before, but now he was able to admire her more closely. She was even more beautiful than he remembered.

  “No! I did not mean it negatively. It was my attempt at a joke...silly, huh?” he apologized. His cheeks turned slight red.

  “Oh! Okay...I was afraid you would be mad at me for keeping you asleep,” she said. Her eyes were wide and frightened. He felt the strongest urge to jump up and give her a hug, to reassure her that she had done nothing wrong.

  “I would never be mad at you...I am actually thankful. I feel no pain at all, anymore, and you spared me that. I wish more doctors would do what you did—put the patient out so they can’t feel the pain.” He laughed and gave her a sincere look. “For me, it seems like everything just happened a couple of minutes ago. I was in terrible pain, and now I’m not anymore. I can see out of both eyes, my wounds are mostly healed...what more could I ask for?” He shrugged his shoulders and grinned. She smiled brightly in return, and sat down next to him. Pain? That was a feeling she was unfamiliar with. How different we are, she thought. Could he really accept me?

  “We have lots to talk about, and...questions I want to ask. But I need to get you up to speed with what has been happening.” She stood up and took his hand in hers.

  Goose bumps raced up Jason’s spine. Her hand was soft and warm; it fit neatly into his.

  “Can you walk?” She started to pull him upright. Their eyes locked momentarily, and then Core looked away.

  “I can surely try.” He put his feet on the ground and slowly eased his weight onto them. He felt a bit weak, but that was all. “You must have been giving me good drugs—I don’t feel weak at all,” he lied.

  “I analysed your blood and matched vitamins, minerals and medicine that would boost your system,” she said, leading him towards a table. The bed and medical equipment dissolved, replaced with the furniture that Core normally kept in her “house.”

  “I finished the installation of the holographic system. It was not too difficult. The Nanites were a bit harder.... I did the first batch in your home office, using the system there to replicate the tools needed to manufacture more Nanites. I also changed the Nanites a fraction to enable self-replication.”

  They sat down at the table in the centre of the room. “I couriered the first batch to the facility and Susan installed them in the first source. From there, it was a couple of hours before the replication system kicked into gear. I now have enough to fill the entire holograph room.”

  “Wow, you are efficient,” Jason said, intensely aware of her hand in his, wishing inside that she would never let go.

  She smiled at him. “Since you arrived, a lot has happened.” A serious look came over her face. “A couple of months ago, we were asked by the military to build a next generation fighting machine to take the soldier out of the field. I designed it to surpass all their expectations...with the help of your holographic technology, we were able to finish two prototypes in record time. The first we activated this morning in laboratory conditions.” The scene on the table zoomed in on a depiction of her nanolak, traveling at speed.

  “Wow! That is a thing of beauty. How is it powered and how is it controlled?”

  “It is powered by a mini nuclear reactor that I designed. We use heat to electrical conversion material to convert the heat given off by a plutonium reactor. This gives us enough power to keep the nanolak going at peak conditions for twenty-four thousand years, the half-life of plutonium.

  “The control is where the problem comes in, however.” Core frowned, and Jason felt his stomach sink.

  “Professor Mathews designed a miniature AI with the ability to control the machine. It was taught all military attack and warfare techniques. We put a directive balance
d with an objective system in place to control the missions. What we did not consider was what would happen if the AI started up and became self-aware without any directives or mission objectives.”

  She looked down at her hand, held tightly in his. She pulled free and felt self-conscious for holding onto his hand so long. She wished that she could truly feel his hand, but her sense of touch was based solely on feedback from the Nanobots, which translated into pressure signals in her brain. She wanted to touch him again, to imagine more thoroughly what touch was like...but dared not scare him away.

  “You see, we programmed it to be a killer, and an extremely good one. The first nanolak was started up this morning.” Her shoulders slumped and she frowned at her knees. Jason felt an overwhelming urge to comfort her. “It took around three minutes for us to work out how to operate the nanolak; it became self-aware at zero eight nineteen. I was about to upload the directives and objectives when he shut down all connections to the neural network. He was completely free....” Her voice quivered. As Jason looked at her in amazement, tears ran down her cheeks. He wiped the tears from her eyes with his hand and turned to look into her eyes. She was real. She was so human!

  Then the tears turned to Nano-dust and fell to the ground.

  “Why are you crying?”

  “Because of what I am about to show you,” she said. “I can’t tell you, it’s easier for you to see for yourself.” The tracking system dissolved and a laboratory was projected onto the tabletop, scaled down to the size of a doll house. Within the projected lab, the nanolak was going through its initialization motions. The scientists stood a couple of meters away. Jason recognized the faces, although he could only name Susan. Then the scientists seemed scared, Susan started to shout, and the nanolak...went berserk. It attacked and ripped one of the technicians to pieces in less than a second. Then it faced off a gun man and disappeared.

  Jason felt the look of horror on his face, but could not conceive of how to change it.

  “What happened?”

  “Time in computer world is different from time in real life. A millisecond is comparable to an hour of our normal life. He had forty-two seconds of computer time after he became self-aware, which is equal to 29.1 days of normal time, to adjust to his environment. In this time he had no controlling directives, nor any objectives.

  “He has a nature likened to a psychopath with unlimited power—he is near invincible and is made of the best technology available. The directives control what he is capable of doing, the objectives gives him purpose. Lacking these, he made a set of directives for himself. I don’t know what the directive is, but from his actions it is clear that he disregards human life.”

  “He is currently in the open fields outside the town of Dalby. We are tracking him.” The table’s view changed back to the tracking scene. Core stood up and leaned against the table. “I convinced the military to allow me to assemble the backup nanolak, upload a smaller version of myself into it, and go after him.” She pointed at her nanolak, which was chasing after Damian. “He calls himself Damian Vasic.”

  Jason saw how close the second nanolak was to the first. “What is your plan when you catch up—how fast is that thing?”

  She chuckled, the distinctive laughter that he remembered from more than a week before. He stood up and sat next to her on the table’s edge and looked down at the scene.

  “I think I can get close enough to hack into his cerebral cortex. But for that to work, I need to lose the fight against him convincingly. When he tries to connect to me, I will have a very small window of opportunity to take control and upload the directives. My AI is much older, and has an advanced memory configuration. My nanolak is much wiser, in other words.”

  “What makes you so sure he will connect to you and not just destroy you on sight?” Jason asked.

  “I cannot be sure, but we designed the nanolaks to work as a team. His training was based on using team dynamics to gain the upper hand. If he stays true to his knowledge, he will try to assimilate, dominate, and control the team structure. Rather than destroy me,” she said, and looked at him with fear in her eyes. “This is based on assumptions, though. If he does not play by his training, then I will have to go to plan B—insert a manual linkup and override his system. That will mean a true physical confrontation,” she said softly.

  Jason opened his mouth to say something, and then stopped. “I am speechless...what can I say...? Is there something I can do to help?” he said. His eyes settled on hers.

  “No. I am in control of that situation and my sub-processes will perform the needed actions to gain access. I was running past Ipswich when an intrusion alarm sounded here in the Holoroom. After I removed the bullet from your leg and stitched you up, I made a fake intensive room with a fake You in the bed. I brought you here to my private retreat to recover while the dummy was visible in the front portion of the room. No one knows you are here, not even Susan. I don’t trust anyone at this point.” She turned to him and placed her hand on the table.

  “Wow...I would not have thought of that.” His eyes followed her every move.

  Core watched as the second nanolak passed Toowoomba and headed towards the open plains of Dalby. Then Damian’s nanolak disappeared from the tracking screen.

  “What just happened?” Jason asked, looking at her with a raised brow.

  “I don’t know...the air force lost sight of him, too.” She stood up, a distant expression clouding her face. “Initiating avoidance systems and switching to radar tracking,” she said mechanically, her eyes fixed on a spot in the air before her. “Radar shows only friendly targets, no sign of Damian. Switching to satellite tracking....” The view on the table switched to detailed satellite imagery of the area. It zoomed in on the field where they had lost contact.

  There in the field was a large blast hole, fifty meters in diameter and thirteen meters deep, with a debris field stretching another two hundred meters around the centre of the crater. “Blast detected, radioactive material present,” Core said. “Red alert, nuclear explosion detected. Equivalent to the effect of mini-reactor burnout.”

  She paused, calculating odds. “Target eliminated, initiating search and recover.” Her voice sounded hollow, as if she was talking in a tunnel.

  The distant look disappeared and she focused on him. He felt an awe overcome him, and suddenly was a little bit afraid of her. “During my initial diagnostics, I detected that my nanolak was running low on power when it moved at full speed. I adjusted the power output from the nuclear reactor, which caused the reactor to overheat. I balanced power production by opening the wind intakes in the chest for cooling; this caused drag, slowing me down a bit. I speculate that the same happened to him, but he did not have enough knowledge of his own function to balance the power and heat problems. His reactor must have overheated and blew up. All evidence points to this.” Her face relaxed and a small smile played on her lips.

  “That is good news, is it not?” he said.

  “Yes, very good news for the threat of a rogue AI, but sad news for the AI life form. We just lost our first AI...” she said softly. She had a strange feeling—an emptiness—when she considered Damian, as though she had just lost a friend. “I will report this to the commander and leave the sub-process to find evidence and return to base.” She left the table and walked over to the couch, where she sat down and crossed her legs beneath her.

  She checked in with her nanolak and found it searching in a grid pattern around the area where Damian had disappeared. It surveyed the site of the explosion, but found no traces of the body, although the crater was consistent with that of the yield for the mini nuclear power plant that had fuelled him. She finished a search of the area, which turned up no sign of Damian or any of his parts. She felt a disappointment radiating from the nanolak’s internal system. Her mini AI wanted to pit itself against Damian. She felt the need for action, and transferred that feeling into attacking the crater sides.

  Core left the nanolak with d
irectives to fill the hole and return to base the same way she had left.

  “Commander, the search returned no sign of him. The crater is consistent with that of a nuclear explosion with small yield. Based on this evidence, I can only conclude that Damian’s power supply exploded,” she reported.

  “Thank you, Core. Complete the clean-up and return to base,” the commander said. “Right! Our work here is complete, so pack up....” Core kept the transmission open, even though the commander was no longer speaking to her but to his crew. He continued. “Professor, I pray you learned your lesson tonight—you need to consider all possible options before activating such a dangerous creature. Having said that, we all witnessed what this technology can do for our soldiers in the field, when it is done right...I want to be the first to congratulate you on the success of the nanolak project.”

  “Thank you, Commander,” Susan’s voice broke in an emotion that was easy to read, even over speakers.

  The commander spoke again. “Corporal, you and your men will remain to help the professor with clean-up and repairs. Level twenty-six is still off limits to civilians until repaired, but others may return to business as usual...Core?”

  “Yes Commander.”

  “Thank you for your work tonight,” he said.

  “You are welcome, Commander.” She felt proud of his commendation.

  Core followed Susan’s progress down to level twenty-six. “Are you okay, Professor?” she asked when Susan was alone in the elevator.

  “Yes Core. I am just sad for Joe. He has no family, thank goodness, but still we lost a great scientist and a dear friend tonight.” Susan’s voice croaked, and she looked down at her feet.

  “I made changes to our test protocols and input a failsafe in the AI’s ability to access the underlying hardware until directives are in place. This will stop such an event from ever happening again.” Core hoped that her change of subject would distract Susan, but she was too distraught.