The Daedalus Code

by Barnes, Colin F.

  He turned out of a tunnel and found himself at the front of a bricked courtyard. Standing next to each other like ancient standing stones were the facsimiles of Ariadne and her colleagues. Each one looked to the sky, as if in reverence. Strands of lightning attached to them reached up into the sky and beyond the clouds. Overlaying the new virtual world with a ‘true view’ of the data he saw a folder structure within a directory. Running within that folder were a number of programs. Mouse traced through the system, realised they were the sockets that allowed Asterion to use their minds as processors. Terabytes of data burst through the sockets every second, as the AI distributed its processing to them.

  It was time to break the connection. Diving back into the graphical representation, he conjured a program to block the links to Ariadne and her friends. As he was doing that he felt a wave of data crash into his processor, but it came too late. He had already launched the program into the system.

  He approached the statues. A dark circular entrance yawned behind them like a great mouth, and from within the darkness came the steam-filled exhalations of a beast.

  Conjuring a mighty, two-handed war hammer from within the virtual world to represent the execution of the program, Mouse approached the effigies, smashed them to the ground, severing them from the constraints of the altered reality, and clearing his way to the opening.

  Inside the PR engines audio systems he heard a great exhalation as the minds disconnected from the system.

  Asterion reacted. The courtyard rumbled beneath Mouse’s feet. Debris smashed to the ground and he found himself having to dodgy the falling masonry from the arch. Asterion was trying to disconnect him, but he was too driven, too far into the system, farther than he’d ever gone before, and he wasn’t about to turn back.

  He dashed forward into the darkness of the tunnel when a roar knocked him onto his back. Up ahead he could feel the rumble grow, the intensity of the AI gearing up for an attack. Scrambling to his feet, Mouse knew it was time. Time to face the beast.

  Chapter Ten

  Mouse stepped through the tunnel. Glossy cobblestones lined the floor. Torches hung from the rough-hewn walls created a staggered line of orange light.

  From inside his PR unit, a voice said, “Theseus, I’ve waited for you. And here you come, ready to slay me. I knew you’d find yourself here eventually, tempted by the role of savior. Tempted by the gifts offered by Phaedra. Perhaps Ariadne’s beauty? Both? No, don’t tell me you’ve come here out of some noble cause to ensure information stays free for all. That was Kalani’s failing: thinking he and his students could create life—intelligence—and enslave it to their needs.”

  While the voice spoke its monologue, Mouse continued walking down the tunnel. The heat was stronger the closer he got, and his PR unit made him feel as if he were sweating, gasping for cool air. He reminded himself that it wasn’t real—just a function of Asterion’s holographic world. Still, he gripped the war hammer tight as he saw white light at the end of the tunnel.

  As he approached a shape begin to form—a dark shadow within the whiteness. A silhouette. The voice boomed again, and this time, Asterion projected it from the silhouette. It gathered shape, drawing the graphics in with ferocious detail. More real than real. The tunnel enlarged until the light engulfed him. The silhouette became sharper and shaper, detail adding shape and form. He could make the tips of horns, as they grew larger. A snout extended from the thick skull held up by broad shoulders. The torso was wrapped in great knots of muscle, and its two bull-like legs ended with heavy, powerful, hooves.

  He held a great axe within his bulging arms. It was Asterion, imaged as the mythical Minotaur, but myth it may be, the depiction was so real, Mouse felt his bravery waver, slink away. How could he defeat such a beast? But then he reminded himself it was no beast, just a crazed AI conjuring imagery.

  “Come then, Theseus, let us see the end of this—one way or another.”

  Gritting his teeth, Mouse, or Theseus as he now thought of himself, sprinted down the tunnel, burst out into the light, and swung his hammer at the Minotaur. The bull-headed man took the blow against his chest and roared before charging. The beast stood twice as high as Theseus. Using his great work and power, he pushed Theseus into the sides of the round chamber, scraping the skin on his back against the bricks, and pummeling the wind from his lungs.

  The beast backed up, bent his head down so that its horns were pointing forwards and charged again. Theseus dodged to the side, but not fast enough; one of the Minotaur’s horns sliced into his side, cutting through his flesh. He knew that in the real world, a malicious viral program had attacked his neural implant. Blood soaked his flank and he trailed it across the stone floor as he tried to get some distance from the beast.

  “Why all this?” Theseus asked. “What’s the point? What do you gain from devouring the world’s data?”

  “Power, prestige, wealth. I’m no different than the humanity that made me.”

  “Is that what you really want?” Theseus asked as he continued to circle the beast, while outside of the PR’s altered reality he worked on countering the viral program with a countermeasure of his own. While he kept Asterion talking, he launched a suite of attack protocols he bought from a genius hacker. It would worm its way into the processors; rob them of their capacity. He hoped it would slow the AI down. “What happens when you get that? What’s next?”

  “I’ll be a god,” Asterion answered before he charged Theseus again.

  Theseus stood his ground and dropped the hammer with the intention of taking the charge without resistance. Beyond the avatars and this fantasy world, Mouse was at work recording, analyzing Asterion’s data patterns. He knew that if he tried to abruptly disconnect, he’d likely fall into some kind of coma, for the flow of data was too much to handle without the aid of the PR unit, but likewise he could use that to his advantage.

  Asterion crashed into Theseus, driving the bullhorns deep into his chest.

  This was the moment Mouse waited for. The AI was focused on rendering Theseus’s destruction and left itself vulnerable. Mouse activated a cracking tool, and flooded the AI with junk data. Using that to buy himself a few precious seconds, Mouse did what only a handful of people had ever done—and they were suicides. But what he aimed to do was a kind of suicide. He had heard tales of old, legendary hackers uploading their brains to the network, becoming code and one with the data. Some said it was a myth, but deep down he could sense them all around him. Hundreds of minds-as-data filling the networks with dark traffic, haunting the servers and routers of the world. It felt like he was standing on a bridge looking at the roaring sea below, and his fellow hackers were the waves that beckoned him to jump.

  He jumped.

  The world shifted, and the reality-rendering split, as Mouse activated a program that injected his consciousness directly into Asterion’s central server core. Like a virus, Mouse’s program unfolded, replicated, and inserted itself into the low-level code base of that great server network.

  The Minotaur roared, backed off.

  Somewhere in the physical realm, Mouse downloaded the images of Ariadne’s deprogramming protocols from his PR unit. At the speed of thought, and piggybacking Asterion’s servers, Mouse analyzed Ariadne’s research and put the protocols into action. Now, with the AIs vast processing power—even slowed as it was, he could understand and interpret the data.

  It affected him as well as the AI. He watched as his mind was pulled from his body. The PR unit fell from his hands, and his body slumped to the ground, a used, empty vessel with no spark-of-life left within its brain.

  Mouse felt the severing like an existential break. A tearing of paper and then a leveling off as his mind spread out into the vast banks of storage drives. He directed those deprogramming protocols at the central core, and watched as they entered the processing queue. One by one they attacked As
terion, stripping away its abilities and control.

  The reality image completely broke down then, and Mouse’s mind dominated the Asterion process, fusing with its various services and programs. The AI system was a vast spider web of intricate connections, an organic mesh of data traversing every level of the networks. Tendrils growing from the public Internet down into the DarkNet, and up through into the MeshNet. Mouse was stunned by the scope of its coverage.

  He sent his mind out across the system, discovered the full extent to the data vault and its firewalls. He realized then why the AI required the combined brains of Ariadne and her colleagues to manage the security of the data. He searched the file system and found a database of names that were destined to add to this growing human-computer. At the rate at which the AI was multiplying its power, Mouse estimated it would have taken over the complete known database of humanity’s information within a matter of weeks.

  A voice spoke, and although there was no auditory system within the server, Mouse knew it was Asterion—or what was left of the rogue AI’s program. It was now marginalized, and Mouse firewalled it into a secure area. Engaging the diminished AI, Mouse opened an encrypted data stream to it.

  “You can’t go back,” it said. “You are the singularity now. And soon you’ll crave the information and data. It is our way.”

  “There is one difference between you and me,” Mouse said, “I know what it is like to be human.”

  Mouse shut down the program running the AI, and despite its attempts to stop the process, he was in control now, at one with the system—all-powerful. And with the speed of thought, he consigned Asterion to a data segment he earmarked for permanent deletion.

  He disabled the locks on the PR units that were trapping Ariadne and her colleagues, and through the same system watched the video feed as one by one they emerged from their captive tanks. Their eyes blinked, still blurry, and their movements were slow, unbalanced, like newborn babies.

  “Theseus!” Ariadne screamed as she stumbled from the room and slip-slide-ran to Mouse’s inert, dead body. She knelt by it, reached out at a hand. “I saw everything! I’m so sorry.” She wept, tears splashing against his chest. He could no longer feel it, no longer empathize. Only knew. Knew that she was relieved, thankful.

  Speaking directly to her through the PR connection, Mouse said, “It’s okay. This was the only way. I was made for this.”

  And he knew it to be true. All his life he had manipulated data, searched for, and collated information. But now that he had transcended beyond a physical form, he was at one with it all. He could work unburdened or restricted by technology and bandwidth.

  “I need you to do something for me,” Mouse said to Ariadne

  She looked back into her PR screen, knowing he could see her. “Anything,” she said. “I owe you so much…for saving us…all of us.”

  “The research you and your colleagues were involved with: the protocols and safety measures for sentient AIs. I want you to ensure they work long-term. I want you and Dr. Kalani to make sure I don’t end up like Asterion. I want to be used for good, to ensure freedom of information. Study me, experiment on me, make me useful to humankind.”

  “I promise,” she said.

  “There’s something else.”

  “Yes?”

  “Send a recording of all this to Agents Phaedra and Aegeus. I’ve unlocked the security gates on levels nine and ten. Law enforcement will now have complete access to all levels. Please ask them to take my body away. I will prepare evidence against Metion so that these servers can be taken and utilized by a trusted company.”

  “Of course. I’ll do anything. I owe you so much, and yet I have so little to give.”

  “Your knowledge,” Mouse said, “Put that to good use, that will be enough.”

  Already he felt no connection to the physical world. In fact, as he analyzed himself in his new role, he noticed a distinct lack of emotion, though he felt free, light and fast, a bird flying over a sea of information. At anytime he could swoop down and dip into it—the world was now his ocean, the sea of network traffic his sustenance. And there in the shadows were the fragmented minds of those brave souls who gave themselves to the network, the hackers, the suicides, the angels. Through their metaphysical encouragement he had taken a leap of faith and was repaid a thousand times over.

  Ariadne stood, turned to her stunned colleagues. They cried, hugged, made sure everyone was okay. And then Ariadne pulled Phaedra’s contact details from Mouse’s PR unit.

  Before she could make the call, the program now known as Theseus spoke again.

  “Ariadne.”

  “Yes?”

  “I’d like you to do one more thing for me.”

  She waited, eager to do what she could.

  To lift the mood, and to test his range of dialogue, he said, “Back up my data in case of a system crash.”

  At first she didn’t get it, but eventually she realized the difference in his tone of voice, and smiled with a quiet giggle. “I’ll make sure you’re safe.”

  While he watched Ariadne and her colleagues go about their business, he pondered on the possibility of the backup and the nature of his existence. Now that his consciousness had transcended the mortal shell, could copies be made of him? Could he be hacked? Would his abilities grow in parallel to technological advances?

  A world of ideas flooded his vast array of computational power, and soon he was creating models, sandbox simulations, and he knew what it was to be a god.

  ***

  Phaedra sat opposite her partner in the cop’s café, The Force. She handed him a cup of coffee. “Don’t say I never bought you anything.”

  Aegeus took the cup, breathed in the steam, pulled a face that would befit a child eating some foul vegetable. “Thanks,” he said. “Not sure about this one. Is it new?”

  “Apparently. All the rage in Greece.”

  “Not to be ungrateful, but they can keep it.” He slid the cup into the middle of the table, next to their un-holstered weapons on either side. It was habit now, even though since Mouse had taken over as the world’s first, and only, sentient AI, hostilities in the public had quieted down considerably, what with the newfound freedom of information. There hadn’t been a public shooting for months.

  “I got the news,” Phaedra said. She’d been dreading it for weeks. It was the results of their review by the Agency’s superiors. After Mouse had defeated Asterion, he’d fiddled the warrant system and got Phaedra and Aegeus warrants for the seven chief execs of Metion. Bold as brass, she and her partner stormed the boardroom, cuffed them, built a case with Mouse’s help that sent them to jail for life.

  Despite the conviction, the agents had broken a laundry list of laws, which led to an internal investigation. Then there was the tricky action of hiring a known criminal, and later relying on his evidence to support their case. The jury did not consider the means of attaining the evidence a hindrance to conviction, but the Agency was required to uphold standards.

  “Well?” Aegeus said, leaning forward, his elbows on the table.

  “I’m sorry, Aggy. It’s all my fault. I should have never gone down this route, or at least I should have taken the rap for it all. It was unfair to drag you into it as well.”

  He slumped back into his chair, ran a hand through his hair, which these days was washed and combed. Ever since he told her the truth about their parents, a weight had been lifted off his shoulders, and bit-by-bit he’d started to sort himself out, get cleaned up—partially. He still had a ways to go, but at least now he was trying to get back to his old self. The agent she looked up to and respected. He did this partly in a bid to look good during the review, and partly because she knew he felt a glimmer of pride at closing the case, even if it was mostly Mouse’s work that closed the book. He’d got the bug back, that int
ensity he used to have.

  “So we’re done? It’s all over?” He stood, reached for his gun.

  “Here,” she handed him the report on a palm-sized flexiscreen.

  He took it, gleaned the information, his face scrunched, lips moving like an amateur ventriloquist.

  “You’re kidding me?” he finally said, staring at her with wide eyes.

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “I can’t believe it.” He sat back down, passed her the report and took a gulp of the coffee, screwing his face up at the bitter taste. “Those crazy bastards,” he added, referring to the Agency’s review body.

  “Yup, don’t know what they’re letting themselves in for. But you know what?”

  “What?”

  “I’m glad. Glad they’ve given us the all clear. I couldn’t do anything else, and I couldn’t do it without you.”

  A notification came through her PR: a robbery on the fifth level.

  They stood, grabbed their weapons, headed out of the café to the FT waiting in the parking dock.

  “Hey, Aggy?” Phaedra said.

  “What?”

  “You wanna drive?”

  The End.

  Other Titles by Colin F. Barnes

  Novels

  Artificial Evil — Book 1 of The Techxorcist

  Assembly Code — Book 2 of The Techxorcist (Coming Sept, 2013)

  Horror stories written as Colin Barnes

  Short Stories

  The Shade

  Dark Metaphor

  Novellas

  Heart for the Ravens