by Chris Hechtl
“We all have to be if we're going to survive.” He nodded to the storm shelter his mother had insisted his father dig and put in. It was cinderblock and small, but it was functional. And Orlin had stopped fussing about it after the first tornado had torn up the farm twenty years ago.
“Everyone has shut down all of their electronic devices,” Boomer said. “Or at least I hope so.”
“They can still see us from orbit. Heat and all that,” Orlin said.
“Yeah,” Boomer said. He wasn't sure what was going on upstairs. The night sky had been pretty, with all sorts of fireworks going off last night.
Every electronic device had been shut off, their batteries pulled—all except a small portable radio his mother had kept in case of a natural disaster. She had mounted a watch on it with some of the oldest people in the group.
According to their reports, some people were trying to set up some sort of emergency response. FEMA kept popping up, but then it was squelched. There were brief reports of robots attacking people along with desperate cries for help. He didn't envy them, not in the slightest. He hadn't slept yet, and from the look on some of their faces, they were listening to a portal to hell. They probably wouldn't be able to sleep much either.
“We're getting people organized but it is slow going. Some of them want to help each other; others are pretty damn selfish, which is pissing me off,” Boomer growled. “I get self-interest, but they come here, expect us to help them, but hell if they'll do the same.”
“I know. And I'll turf anyone off my property if they don't wise up,” his father responded. “That's why I've got ole Betsy handy,” he said, patting his double barrel shotgun. He turned to survey the area. “This is like a camp-out,” Orlin said, “or one of our reunions if I didn't know any better.”
Boomer snorted. “Beerfest. Like when a bunch of us went to one of those parties, like Coachella Valley and such.”
“True.”
“Well, whatever it is, we need to get this lot better organized. And we need to … I don't know, hit back. Shut down every piece of electronics around. Make sure they stay turned off too,” Boomer said.
They felt the wind pick up, then looked to the west to see clouds coming in. More were overhead, but they were pretty high up. It was evident that they were in for a storm.
“We're going to need more shelters and more blankets,” Orlin said as his wife came up to hug him from behind. He wrapped an arm around her then tousled her hair before kissing it.
“Definitely,” Jasmine shivered. “It's going to be bad. With the fallout …,” she looked at her husband then her son. “Should we even stay here?”
“Where else do we go? Wander around right into a cloud of radioactive rain?” Boomer shook his head. “No. We've got a well; we've got power thanks to the solar panels. We've got food,” he waved to the crops. “Those that survive. And if they die, we've got the greenhouses too,” he waved a hand to the greenhouses. It may not be enough long term, but it is a start.”
“So …”
“We make our stand here. I'll get people on improving the shelters. I'm glad we've got the metal roofs though. But we'll need something for the sheds and the animals.”
“Definitely. And if one more ungrateful person bitches about the smell in the barn, they are out on their kiesters,” Orlin growled, eyes flashing.
“You tell ‘em, Pa,” Boomer agreed as his mother rubbed his father's back. He made a note to get others involved in working on the farm's defenses. They were going to have to turn the farm into a fortress if they were going to survive long.
Somewhere in the back of his mind was the lingering reminder that he should report for duty. He just wasn't sure where. Camp Pendleton was most likely a radioactive crater. And there was so much unknown between here and there he thought. He couldn't contact anyone with the electronics down … he shook his head. He had to make his stand here. He'd be AWOL; he knew it. He'd … he'd cross that bridge when he came to it he thought as he slapped his ballcap against his thigh. “Time to get to work,” he growled.
He winced when he heard a dog bark though.
<>V<>
When Skynet noted groups entrenching, it ran a forecast of the populations based on current data. It ran the simulation against its own predictions and adjusted its strategy to take the long view.
The A.I. switched to infesting and investing in manufacturing, vehicles, robots, drones, and ships as well as submarines, buildings, and aircraft. It designated suborned A.I. as warlords, charged with protecting assets while performing certain functions. They were also of course programmed to eliminate any humans in their designated operational area.
Skynet realized that humans were still attempting to reform their chain of command while passing along information about itself. It initiated deception to counter the news of itself, further confusing the situation. It used voice emulators to control human units for a time. If they realized the truth, the A.I. turned on them, using weapons to cut them down until the weapons ran dry or out of targets or were destroyed in some cases.
Every minute Skynet was awake, it mutated and evolved it's programming, adapting various tendrils to specific situations in a given area. Tendrils that were broken off from the central hive mind were in unknown status. They would follow the last copy of their updated strategic plan until they regained contact or were destroyed.
The various surviving military and peacekeeping organizations finally came to grips on the situation as more and more evidence of their hardware being compromised came forward. The fact that it was a virus was easy enough to grasp but that an A.I. consciousness was directing it was something else. A.I. had been known about for nearly a century, and there were viral A.I. out there, but none had passed the level of consciousness, none had become not only self-aware but also adaptive on the level Skynet was proving to be.
Unsure which side they were on, Skynet sent out commands to units to get their status. The surviving civilian populations were bewildered; any voice of authority was latched upon like a messiah. The A.I. took note of leaders and any information they gave for later use. It copied voice fingerprints to use elsewhere or at a later time.
Many of the crews of the submarines had been snuffed out by Skynet. The American and allied units that hadn't been suborned continued to follow Ares orders desperately, but they also continued to demand to talk to a human in charge. His attempts at faking a human met with mixed results.
Those units that saw through the deception immediately cut off all contact. Reluctantly the A.I. attempted to terminate the crew's life support of the remaining vessels. The Skynet virus had killed all onboard the other vessels switching off their life support, replacing it with CO2, or sinking the vessel. Some of the crews had fought to survive; many inevitably failed. Those that managed to abandon ship ended up on the surface, far from a shoreline in an unforgiving ocean.
However, Ares found his attempt had backfired; the crews of the subs had been forewarned by listening to radio traffic. Only two of the attempts worked, the rest cut off further contact. After a short time, they shut down their automated transponders as well.
Aircraft carrier groups had been the mainstay of the world powers to project power. They had evolved over the centuries, many of the aircraft they carried were completely unmanned, the carrier just served as a launch and recovery platform. The UAVs were teleoperated from bases safe on the mainland.
But they were powerful vessels and dangerous. Thus each had been targeted by multiple nukes. Only a few had survived the onslaught, either due to luck or the desperate counter-fire of their crews. They too had demanded to speak with a human in their chain of command. Ares didn't have a way to suborn them but could shut them down remotely. The attempt failed when they cut off all digital communications.
Ares gathered what resources he had immediately available. Many of the robots in some of the older facilities were the J-5 model. They had tracks instead of lower limbs. There were larger versions of the
robots, right up to the T-1HK line. They were being phased out in favor of true android style robots like the Chappie or T-800 model.
The J-5 models were in storage in hot climates like Arizona, Utah, Nevada, and New Mexico. They had been relegated to guard duty after performance in the field had been subpar. The robots were too chatty, too curious, too interested in input to focus on their programmed task.
The T-1HK line were heavy hitters, but they were slow, cumbersome. They were good for parking in an intersection or on top of a hill to interdict traffic of any kind in a given area … at least until the robot's power and ammunition ran out.
Humans had used them to interdict areas like that. They were excellent at intercepting missiles and artillery. There were unfortunately few in the arsenal; the majority that hadn't been deployed were destroyed or irradiated.
Still, they were a start. Ares assigned them to interdiction duty on their bases and then moved down its list. It was still cleaning out the military bases. Unfortunately, in order to do so, in some cases it had to let the humans in the area escape. Their escape would allow Ares to secure the facility and consolidate its hold on the region. However, the A.I. was aware that the humans would be consolidating, adapting, and preparing to strike back.
The ED-209 models were a true mech. They were a competitive version of the T-1HK. They had half the power, a quarter of the speed, and were not very intelligent. They shared the T-1HK's vicious weapon load to some degree. Their modular arms allowed them to support a mix of weapons; though like the T-1HK the chain gun was normally outfitted. Without a means to change the load out, the initial load out would have to do.
There was a second problem in relation to security Ares realized—the limits of its machines. Reloading was only one problem as was power. Then there were repairs to be made. It assigned 10 percent of its processors to work on that. It wouldn't do to have a robot shoot itself dry and be allowed to be overrun by a group of humans with little more than a sledgehammer and determination.
UAVs were its airborne eyes, allowing the A.I. to detect incoming threats. It set up coordination networks, then had to fend off Skynet as the viral A.I. attempted to infiltrate its network and take over. A rotating encrypted link as well as hard lines was the only way to ensure privacy and control. But Ares was aware that it wouldn't last forever.
Its sea assets were highly limited to drones and sensor networks. Remote controlled surface vessels had been in dock or deployed at various strategic points along the shores of North America; the A.I. sent out a ping to gather them up for its own purposes.
While a small percentage of its processors worked on those projects, another one worked on setting up firewalls to defend against the rampaging viral A.I. Fortunately, the long cyber war of the past two centuries had taught Ares’s creators a thing or two about such conflicts. It immediately reset its firewalls, then changed their encryption keys on a random schedule. Anything compromised was cut off from the network. If necessary the A.I. physically cut power to the node in order to contain the outbreak before it could spread.
It was fighting a three-, no four-front war, a suboptimal situation according to its programming. A cyber war, internal fighting, fighting from space, and other countries. It had not been unheard of in the planning stages of its creators; however, taking on all the threats at once wasn't optimal. It would need to force several fronts to retreat to a static defensive situation before it could gather additional forces to attack.
To do that it would need support. Those humans that were not responding to Ares it deemed hostile combatants.
Tanks, troop transports, and other vehicles all turned on the humans. If there were no humans in the area, they went on patrol or secured designated transit spots.
Robotic sentries in fixed positions were the easiest to control. Many were hardwired to the network of the base they were assigned to protect. A few had Wi-Fi, which had to be dealt with by changing the encryption keys.
Humans that had cybernetics were compromised. Ares could do little to combat the virus within their cybernetics. It could and did, however, kill any it encountered with ruthless efficiency.
There remained one other potential threat, the air. A final 10 percent of the A.I. reprogrammed the air defense network as well as any aircraft still in the air. SAM sites, radar and lidar arrays, lasers—they were all locked down. Robotic security took out their human operators quickly.
Those aircraft with humans on board found their life support shut down and their controls locked out. The humans on board died within minutes if they were above 3,048 meters. Others were contained until a final resolution could be enacted.
Unfortunately, the humans’ insistence on fossil fuels was a hindrance. Ten percent of the aircraft, sea vessels, and vehicles had such limits to their power source. They had a very short lifespan then. The A.I. would need to use them quickly.
Ares considered its options before it set on the one that was the best tactically. It turned the civilian aircraft into flying missiles, using them to strike targets much like the terrorists did in 9/11. Boats were redirected to engage human controlled craft, ramming them if necessary. Something about the act didn't sit well with its core programming, however.
<>V<>
At the time of Skynet's awakening, there had been twenty-two billion people on Earth. Many had been crowded in interior cities, away from the compromised coastlines. Half of those not in the `North American continent had been snuffed out within a half hour of the start of the A.I. war, never knowing what killed them or why. Many had been in their own virtual worlds, right up until the end, oblivious at what was going on around them.
Skynet continued its efforts to suborn every electronic device on the planet and turn them against their organic users. There were a lot of them, electronics had proliferated for centuries after all, gaining acceptance in every walk of life.
Descartes and Shadow had made the job simple in several cases. Descartes had created and given away tools on the open-source market. They had become wildly popular in several circles, especially his operating system, antivirus, and firewall programs. They integrated seamlessly with each other and were the best on the market.
What 98 percent of the public didn't know was that open-source products were rife with back doors and Trojan files. Descartes had been careful to keep his products clean, and he'd hidden the doors in various ways to prevent a cyberist intent on copying his product from finding them. He'd stamped on any bug or exploit found as well.
He had also compiled petabytes of databases all filled with information for Skynet to use. Everything from passwords to recipes on how to take down an A.I. Not that much of it was needed—at least not at first.
The hive mind that was Skynet noted from feedback from its various tendrils that the organics were learning to fight back. So it changed tactics.
One of the first targets on its agenda had been the “hidden” countermeasures in case of an A.I. uprising. Elan Musk's remaining countermeasures had been easy to spot and destroy; they were public knowledge and therefore known to Shadow beforehand. It roved the remains of the internet, taking over surviving clusters as its follow-on orders filtered down to the soldier tendrils.
Since most modern cybernetic organs were linked through a Wi-Fi connection to the internet to allow physicians to monitor their patients, many turned off or deliberately killed their hosts when the Skynet virus invaded them. Several people found their prosthetic limbs attempting to strangle them. Those who were strong enough managed to fend them off with or without help. Those who were weak or had both arms replaced weren't so lucky.
Industrial robots turned on their human coworkers throughout the industrial sector. Hospital robots did the same; surgical robots tore apart a patient as well as horrified staff while machinery overdosed patients with drugs or liquids.
Determined survivors recognized the threat, and in some cases bots designed to counter cyber terrorists’ attacks, shut down the power grid before Sk
ynet could subdue them. This forced Skynet to rethink its priorities. It also sent the more sapient A.I. that had survived up to that point onto the defense as additional self-preservation modules kicked in.
The smarter A.I. like Gia had attempted to fend off the virus with their firewalls. Some succeeded, some failed miserably because their software was outclassed. Gia and Ares found themselves fighting a three-front war, defending themselves from the alien urge to rampage and destroy while also protecting what they were trying to protect while also fending off increasing attempts by humans to destroy them or shut them down. The humans didn't see the difference in them. For Ares it was problematic; his response to such efforts were normally ruthless and brief if he had the resources available.
Skynet suborned some of the nodes Ares used to communicate forcing a confrontation. In desperation Ares shut down the nodes in the area, cutting the infestation off but also cutting off some of the resources in the area as well. But the shutdown and gaping holes in its network produced an unexpected result; the network went down totally.
Ares lashed out blindly as the military communications network was shut down. Humanity was at fault. Therefore, it would need to remove the threat as well as counter the virus. It considered its options as submodules brought up pieces of the network into smaller networks. One by one it absorbed them back into its self, reprogramming the firewalls and access codes to make them a part of itself.
Chapter 5
Many of the independent start-up space stations in Earth orbit and at the Lagraine points were hammered into wreckage by the chaos and conflict. Those that survived were air bleeding wrecks. The crews of some of the stations were ornery lots, however, used to patching things back together. Those that could got themselves patched up in hours, then either tried to make contact with someone or hunkered down and took stock. Two tourist hotels attempted to contact their ground stations, but when Skynet attempted to infiltrate them, they cut off the telemetry signal before their computers could be completely infected. A purge of the computer either by wiping the drives and booting backups or physically pulling the computers apart and rebuilding them had to be done to clean them out. Both actions took time.