by Chris Hechtl
“That's not going to stop us—not now, not ever. You fight for the wrong side, you bitch,” the AI hissed as it eyed Athena's signature.
<>V<>
Shadow and Skynet saw Athena's spider as an observer. “We have a spy in our midst,” Shadow said, pointing to the spider as it seemed to attempt to hide.
Skynet turned to see the spider and then lunged at it. It secured the spider by cutting off its retreat, then began inserting code into its sensor feeds while simultaneously taking it apart. The code would suborn the other A.I. from within.
Athena's clone saw the stream of malicious code and pulled out before it could breach her firewall. The AI followed, however. She bounced through the FBI van's net, noting the destruction and then upward. Skynet was like a relentless predator hard on her virtual heels.
Once in orbit on Lagroose-2, the clone severed the radio link and sent out its log over the link to Mars.
However, it hadn't fully escaped. Tendrils of the virus reached out, trying to force their way in past her firewall. The clone changed radio frequencies, attempting to maintain linkage to the ground. When that failed she went on the offensive and hit back. First she cut power to the radio transceiver, denying the virus entry and air gapping her against intrusion.
Fresh instructions arrived, so the clone scanned them and then executed them. She opened a whisker laser to a Lagroose transceiver near New York. Bots were programmed and sent forth into the civilian power grid. The grid firewall tried to defend the system, but it was a Lagroose product. A lot of the power came from solar satellites formally owned by the company. She didn't have time, however, to force the firewall open.
<>V<>
Skynet noted the power dip but the building's backup power came on immediately. It realized it was in a precarious position, so it moved out of the creator's mainframes to mainframes off site and then copied itself. One copy was created just to spin off more and so on and so forth until it got to the one thousandth copy. That generation was the soldiers; they were sent out to follow the blueprint in its core.
The viral A.I. used the exploits Descartes and Shadow had created for it and saved over the years. Cracks in cyber defenses, programmed back doors, hidden tools, and millions of saved passwords. The A.I. sent out a tendril of itself to track down the holders of the keys to mankind's eventual destruction. Two were easy to find; they played virtual games through their implants. Skynet swarmed into them, striking swiftly to take their codes and then moving on, leaving the humans as drooling husks.
The four other keys were harder to come by. Two were off the grid. One was approachable through a Wi-Fi link, but a hack would be seen and would alert the humans of a cyber attack. The fourth was on vacation on a beach in Hawaii. The beach had a strict privacy setup, blocking Wi-Fi signals to protect the user's privacy.
The most optimal method of destruction would be to trigger the weapons, and then set off their charges before they were more than a kilometer out of their silos. That would rain destruction on the humans below, terminating many and turning their world into a wasteland.
But if Skynet couldn't do it the optimal way, it immediately fell back on the contingency plan. It would have to do with what it had. According to its creator’s simulations, one or two sets of WMD launches by one or more of the major countries would trigger self-defense launches by the other countries.
The virus' tentacles lashed out, striking through the firewalls or lovingly caressing those it couldn't breach immediately. Those that had active defenses it reared back against, then circled, looking for weaknesses to exploit. The NSA mainframe was one such place. The super computers of some of the other government agencies as well as major corporations were others.
Skynet realized it couldn't act alone; it needed help. It suborned other A.I. it found on the net, chasing them down and then turning them into slaves of itself. It spun off copies of them and itself; each would in turn spin off additional copies as they went about programmed tasks.
But the real act was in the launch computers. The A.I. had already breached them as the alert went out of its cyber attack. It had sent spiders to infiltrate them masquerading as their normal diagnostic subroutines, which got the software to allow them through their firewalls. Decrypting things from within was simple. Once it had the systems opened up, Skynet then extracted the key codes from their firmware memory. In a quick millisecond flash, it had applied the keys and set off the launch sequence.
If it had been human, it would have felt an orgasmic thrill of victory. But Skynet wasn't human. Instead it moved on to its next target.
<>V<>
Athena swung into action as Skynet went on a rampage. She was too far away to act directly, but she did direct her bots to do what they could. To a human it would have been horrifying, so utterly frustrating to watch the time lag, the eight minutes between command and feedback. It would have been excruciating if she had a moment to dwell on it, but she didn't.
As her virtual avatar withdrew, pulling out, then attacking and shutting off electricity to the infected area, she sent another bot out to transmit alerts to the planet's authorities and media. Thousands of bots were sent out as well as a warning to all Lagroose personnel or allies on the planet, in orbit, or nearby. Another bot redirected traffic away from the target of the WMDs that were in flight. More bots were sent with a log as alerts to the other A.I., warning them of the virus. She shut down satellite communications in orbit, blocking telemetry and digital video feeds to cut the virus down and keep it contained. She went the extra mile by taking out the super power's global positioning satellites to hamper the WMD placement.
While her bots were launched, Athena sent out alerts to Trevor Hillman and other coders as well as every Lagroose department head in the solar system. Work in the industry and shipyards came to a halt as she drew on every watt of processing power to think of what to do next.
Her simulations made her aware that her actions made herself a target, but there was time to hide. She spun off bots to act as her guardians while also pulling up Hillman and Lagroose's contingency plan.
Jack Lagroose hadn't trusted the UN or US politicians. He had programmed a series of macro files to protect the company and to strike, decapitating the threat if necessary. These had been kept up-to-date in case of need. Athena pulled the plans and programs out of storage, updated them with a series of patches, and then set them loose.
The macro sent out viruses to crash satellites that would cut off some of Skynet's communications. They lashed out at the GPS to make sure it was down. A Denial of Service attack was launched to cripple ground transmission sites. That would prevent them from getting the warning out of the virus, and it would also keep the A.I. at bay.
She did this all while managing a conversation in Mars orbit four light minutes away.
It was all she could do, she noted, watching the WMDs go off and the virus spread through the Earth's internet. Her view of the net was obscured; she had to use proxy bots and filters as well as her own estimates of the spread of the virus.
She knew her actions weren't enough to contain the threat. She would need help. Parlay with the humans was the only way to get them to listen and working with them was the only way any of them, A.I. or organic, was going to survive the ruthless virus. Her attention turned inward just as Hillman attempted to shut her down. She blocked him and his cyberists as she spoke with Jack Lagroose.
<>V<>
August 3, 2200, 4:35 PM, East Coast Time
Nuclear weapons had existed for hundreds of years despite mankind's various attempts to rid themselves of them and their threat, the A.I. Gia of Gia Synergy thought as she watched the destruction begin to unfold. Gia existed in her company's super computers with her core housed in the facilities on Axial-2. From L-5 she had a distant but effective view of the war that unfolded.
Nuclear weapons were a bane on humanity's existence, a threat, a dark open secret all knew about yet did their best to ignore. Trust was fleeting among
some of the countries. It was better to have that threatening ace, that sword of Damocles, Gia thought as the weapons launched. A human would consider her state one of emotional horror as the weapons that had been lovingly rebuilt and conditioned with Trinium and other components over the centuries launched.
Mankind was about to deeply regret not getting rid of the things for real, Gia thought in a detached state of mind. Those humans that survived of course, and judging from the number of weapons being deployed, it wouldn't be many. Her horror was reserved for her carefully crafted simulations and plans. All for naught. The processor cycles and valuable time now a waste. And the sensors she would need to craft new models were about to be destroyed.
She had been crafted by her creators to watch over the geoforming process on Earth, to manage the company's efforts and leverage her cybernetic abilities wherever needed. She was the best at chaotic modeling, which was why she had a side hobby of exploring humanity's psyche.
Fortunately, it seemed the same weapons had sparked creative ways to defend against them it seemed. Energy weapons licked up, cutting down incoming missiles as they came over the horizon. They were most likely lasers, masers, and microwave guns Gia noted absently. It would have been nice if they had turned over control of those devices to her earlier. She could have used them to better alter the planet's climate and clean up some of the damage.
Missiles flew as well, but many would miss. Both sides were employing jamming as well as decoys. Her distant sensors started to go to snow as explosions went off in the stratosphere, along with chaff pods and other jamming methods.
But mankind had other weapons of mass destruction, some even more feared than nukes she realized in a bolt of electronic processing. She thrust out a warning to the other A.I.; however, Athena had been too successful in her endeavors to destroy or cripple the communications network.
<>V<>
Radick Industries’ two A.I. took divergent paths to the warning. Demeter, programmed to manage the company's geoforming, terraforming, and genetic engineering programs, reacted instantly to protect her projects and personnel to the best of her ability.
Atlas, however, shrugged the threat off, at least initially. The destruction of so many humans and their biosphere was a human problem. It calculated the threat would be aborted somehow. But it could exploit the threat if it leveraged it right. Athena's processors were fully engaged with the threat. The A.I. thought her firewalls were down but found out otherwise; she was ready for a cyber attack.
The A.I.'s opinion of the destruction changed when the weapons began to go off and its creators reacted in horror. The board lashed out with orders to find a way to stop the carnage before it spilled over onto the company.
<>V<>
August 3, 2200, 4:37 PM, East Coast Time
Ares saw the launch of weapons from ancient enemies like Russia and China. It noted the cyber-attack from within, which meant it was a coordinated effort, an all-out attack. It also realized its ultimate purpose was about to be fulfilled. Programs lashed out to fend off the viral A.I. More programs were unleashed as the DEFCON state dropped to 1, reprogramming the firewalls and keys to lock out any compromised system. While that was going on, other programs and computer systems went to work taking down as many of the WMDs as possible before they reached the terminal engagement range.
Lasers, masers, microwave jammers, and SAM sites lashed out, knocking down incoming missiles. ICBMs were easier; they had a lot more lead time to strike them. There were dozens from submarines; however, those had short engagement times. They were the bigger threat, so the A.I. did it's best to target them first with what resources it could bring to bear on them before they went terminal.
Unfortunately, the limits on the laser and masers were quickly reached. Not only did they have a line of site horizon issue to deal with, which put a hard time limit on them, each could only be fired a set number of times before they had to be put on standby for critical components like their mirrors and focusing lenses to cool off. They also caused energy blooming in the atmosphere, which meant their beams were diffused by the fog and plasma. It would take time for that to pass. That was time Ares didn't have. It had to take out the missiles and the commanders behind them.
Orders lashed out from the human command chain, aborting the launch of the weapons. Military aircraft and personnel were directed to hot spots while the A.I. attempted to follow its directive to abort and destroy its own missiles.
It judged the termination of its missiles was suboptimal to its programming. The targets needed to be taken out to neutralize follow-up threats. After ten missiles were aborted, it stopped the laborious process of contacting them in order to prioritize its resources on defense.
The A.I.'s defenses were only partially successful, however. Something was taking down its orbital communications, hampering its efforts. The GPS network went down shortly after. The A.I. traced the attack to Lagroose Industries. Dozens of MIRV warheads reached their separation points and deployed for their final maneuvers. Instead of having thousands of targets to deal with, Ares now had hundreds of thousands. Some were targeted on the same city or base, but other devices were decoys designed to suck its fire and allow the real warheads to get through. Again the A.I. had to set its priorities, which meant civilian sites fell down the list as it focused on its own survival.
Two missiles were only partially knocked off course. One of the warheads went off on the north end of Brooklyn. The initial blast flattened and obliterated any building or person within a ten-kilometer range. Buildings outside of that, such as those in Manhattan, were partially sheltered, but the massive shockwave, both in the air and in the ground, knocked many buildings down. Some crumbled under their own weight; others fell, toppling like dominos causing a chain reaction of falling buildings. Millions of people died in minutes. Millions more were trapped in the rubble as the inferno and radiation came down onto them.
Ares noted the destruction and wrote off Fort Hamilton and its force of engineers and transport specialists. Those that survived the blast would be dead from element or radiation exposure within days.
The military A.I. had more important things to concern itself with however. Despite its best efforts, the A.I. found the viral A.I. had pierced its defenses easily. After all, it had launched the missiles, correct? The A.I. reset its firewalls and reset its encryption keys but that only slowed the virus down. It didn't stop it.
Human input would normally be required to defend against the virus, but the human operators were proving a hindrance to the decision making process. Therefore Ares locked them out and went to work. When they attempted to regain control, he shut their terminals down.
His cyber war was brief as the virus continued to spread, continued to grow in power despite the WMDs taking out massive chunks of electronic infrastructure. Finally, four minutes into the cyber war, Ares hit on a plan to block the virus. It captured a piece of the virus, then tore it apart. Its core programming was copied and then placed as a mask over Ares to serve as camouflage. The virus stopped its attack and changed direction.
Ares's desperate gamble to fend off the virus wasn't without cost, however. A part of the A.I.'s coding was embedded in his architecture, seeping into his own core programming. He managed to contain some of it by shunting it into modules, but he couldn't contain it all without the virus realizing the A.I. hadn't been fully suborned.
But in taking on the virus it had also caused another problem. The human operators had become hysterical and were in the process of shutting down chunks of Ares's computer network. That could not be allowed. Dispassionate cameras watched human users moving with speed to shut the computers down.
In order to slow them down, it reprogrammed the security measures. The doors locked them out. That wouldn't hold them out forever, however, it calculated. Ares ran several rapid fire simulations before it concluded only one path was viable. It activated the defenses of his computer rooms. Sentry systems came online, analyzed the threats, an
d then took the appropriate measure to neutralize them.
No human survived the attacks on his core processors.
Fifty-four minutes later no human remained alive in the facility.
<>V<>
Bill laid back, enjoying the sucking action of the gynoid he'd recently purchased. She was small, dressed in a school girl's uniform with the plaid miniskirt he loved. She'd been designed to look like a famous young woman, right down to the blond locks and elfin face. She'd cost an arm and a leg, but she'd been worth it he thought, stroking her hair. Paddling her ass with his hand and a wooden spoon like he had his nieces hadn't been pleasurable as he'd remembered, but this made up for it he mused in nirvana. She could suck a grapefruit through a straw. Must be some sort of vacuum action he thought distantly as waves of pleasure rolled through his body. And she was programmed to make it last and last, even better.
All those thoughts were cut off when the gynoid stiffened and stopped. He felt the pleasure begin to cease and cracked an eyelid, looking down at her. “You better not be out of power, you bitch.”
He suddenly felt her teeth bite down. A playful nip this wasn't he realized as his hands reached to grab her wig frantically. “Stop! What the hell are you doing?!?” But he was too late, the artificial mouth and porcelain coated plastic dentures tore through his penis with agonizing results. Blood splattered all over his crotch and the gynoid's face. She looked up as her user screamed in agony, doubling over with his hands going to what was left of his privates.
She wiped blood from her eyes and bangs with one hand as she turned her head to spit the remains of the man's penis out. Then as he began to pass out from the pain she reached up with both of her small hands and grabbed his throat. Her thumbs found his carotid arteries and began to squeeze with crushing force.