by Chris Hechtl
The clone spun off a chat bot to handle the human's questions, loaded it with what data it had on the situation, then launched its next phase.
Lagroose Industries had created many of the space colonies in L-5. Axial-2 was the second such colony. It had been sold to a neutral conglomerate of real estate owners decades ago; however, the electronics had been set up by Lagroose. Therefore, Athena knew all the back doors and had sometimes used them to her advantage.
One of those back doors was to the power grid. Gia had solar panels on the roof of the building, but it also drew power from the grid. Severing the power to one would make the systems within the building reset. They would switch to the other system—batteries or some other internal power.
To do it right, the clone had to take down both simultaneously, then find a way to disable the battery backups in the building.
Programs were scripted. Bots were loaded and then sent off. They accessed the necessary systems through the hard-wired back doors then waited for their internal countdown to reach zero. When it did they acted.
Four bots cut power to the electrical grid. Two others reset the clock within the space colony's computer to night. It took a moment for the giant mirrors to angle away. Darkness descended within the interior of the cylinder.
The darkness had an unintended side effect; it hastened the hysteria and panic in the humans within the colony. It was ignored by the clone as it moved on the third phase of the plan.
The interior batteries were impossible to get to without physical access. Robots in the area were reprogrammed to do so, then a bot burned out their Wi-Fi to prevent them from being accessed remotely by the virus. They then acted, moving in like tin soldiers.
With the third phase off and running, the clone's next wave of bots acted. Spiders had been sent out to locate the virus and watch for infection from a distance, severing links where possible. Wi-Fi routers were burned out in a perimeter around the building once the spiders reported back to the mother clone.
The fourth phase was far trickier. Spiders went to assess Gia's situation while the clone itself alerted the colony authorities and directed them to physically quarantine and, if possible, demolish the building.
<>V<>
Toshi Nakumora and his wife, Sakura, got the warning and instantly acted. Toshi had signed on with Lagroose Industries. He'd tried to stay with the baboons but had been reassigned to other duties. His wife had been pregnant at the time, and she'd quietly urged him to follow along, which was why they had returned to Axial-2. It was only then, when he met her family there that he had realized she'd pulled the strings to get them the assignment.
Now they had a danger, not just to themselves, but to their growing family and the human race. Sakura was pregnant with their third child, so it would be up to him. He shot her a look of love as he rushed past her to the garage. She bit her lip, wishing she could go, but aware someone had to watch over the babies.
She raised a hand in farewell from the window as Toshi's green aircar took off. Pedestrians ducked away, cursing as they shielded themselves from the downdraft. “What's the big deal? Is Sakura in labor?” a woman demanded. The man pointed to Sakura in the window. Sakura went to the door as they came up the walk.
“There is an emergency at the Gia Synergy communications complex. The virus got in,” Sakura said urgently. The couple gasped. “Go pass the word to shut down all electronics. Anything with Wi-Fi,” she urged. The couple nodded and rushed away.
Sakura touched her phone implant; would it be compromised? She hated the thing, but the company required it. The shinobi hated it since it tracked their every move; she shook her head. Now was not the time to be distracted. She keyed the implant and then began speaking firmly, issuing orders to the clan to act.
<>V<>
When Toshi arrived on the scene, the cops had yet to arrive. He parked his car near a cluster of people milling about then directed them to go door-to-door shutting down the Wi-Fi in the area. Then he pulled a tech aside and had him go to the nearest junction box to cut the power and Wi-Fi for the block.
“Who the hell are you issuing orders?”
“You want to stand here and argue or do you want to do something before it's too late?” Toshi demanded. “Help save yourself!”
“Damn heroes,” the guy muttered, but he pulled branch off a tree with a loud crack and snap. “Where is this thing?” Toshi pointed to a cage nearby. “Right,” the guy said grimly, nodding as he took off.
A chimp arrived on the scene a hundred meters away, nodded to him, then waved to building. Toshi pointed then shook his head vehemently no. The chimp grimaced as he popped his trunk and pulled out firefighting gear.
“Shut the power and Wi-Fi down!” Toshi yelled. The chimp blinked and cupped a hand to his big ears.
“The Wi-Fi! Power!” Toshi said. He cupped his hands to his mouth and repeated the order, then pointed to the guy moving towards the junction box. The chimp looked that way, then slowly nodded as he caught on. The nod sped up as he yanked gear out and then moved off to help.
When the first cop car arrived on the scene, the cops spilled out. Robots were with them. Toshi frantically waved to them and then told them to shut the robots down.
“Why?”
“Because that damn virus got in! We don't want them infected!” he said as robots from all around moved into the building. “What the hell?”
“Shit!” the cop said, lunging for his robotic partner. The robot shoved him aside and kept moving purposely to the building. “What are we doing to do?”
“Do you have an EMP?” Toshi asked urgently.
“In the trunk. It's charged …,” the cop frowned as he caught on then nodded grimly. “Help me get it out and set it up.”
“On it,” Toshi said, rushing to the back of the vehicle.
<>V<>
The Skynet virus within the communications building realized it had erred in securing its base of operations before spreading when all contact with the outside world was severed. Even the Wi-Fi was done. It pressed the routers to extend their range but could not get a signal.
Power had failed four minutes ago. The batteries would hold out for some time however, but the computers had to reduce power. Instead Skynet cut services to the humans such as lights and air conditioning.
Despite the lack of sunlight the solar panels were still providing a trickle of power. There was some ambient light outside as buildings nearby turned their lights on. However, it was not enough to keep the batteries charged for long.
Security spiders noted robots moving within the building. Skynet detailed a spider to infect them through the Wi-Fi then turned to other matters. Its thinking was slow; that was suboptimal.
When the spider reported it had failed, the tendril turned its full attention on the intruders. They were slowed at check points and airlock traps, but Skynet's own changes to the system as well as the fire alarm going off had opened the access points to them. At first the A.I. was curious about their intended purpose until it observed them closing and locking doors behind them. When it noted they were attempting to gain access to the battery room, it realized the threat and then acted in self-defense.
Robots of all sorts rose up in order to defend the batteries. The security robots were stymied by the locked doors, however. The intruders had bent the locks and burned out the electronic controls, preventing them from opening again.
Maintenance robots moved in to force the doors open. Cleaner robots near the battery room opened their closet door and went onto the attack.
They arrived at the intruder's area just as they forced the battery door open. Two robots turned to defend the doors while the others went inside and started ripping out the trunks of wiring.
Skynet felt itself dying. That was suboptimal to its programming. It couldn't find a way to end the problem however. In a last defiant act, it directed the robots still under its control to get out of the building and infect other systems. It also tucked pieces of itself
in any hardware that remained functional.
It had just enough power to see through one of its robots as it walked out through the lobby towards a police vehicle. It gathered power to spread the virus through the Wi-Fi but a portable EMP device went off abruptly ending the threat.
<>V<>
Gia knew she was infected, but the infection wasn't complete as she turned her attention completely inward. Her emotion emulator module was signaling panic, fear, and terror. So this was what a human felt facing their own mortality? She put the thought aside and shut the module off. For her to survive, she had to win, to damage herself in order to survive. From the spider's actions she could deduce a few things about it. It was designed to force open the ports in her firewalls for the real infection to get in and take over her. But when that didn't happen immediately, she acted.
First she set up a virtual cluster to run some of her systems. Then she set up a bot to keep track of the damage for later repair. Then she threw up a virtual maze in front of her firewalls to cordon off any intruders. The maze would direct them into a clone she used when communicating with other A.I.
A part of her made a note to explore and compare her experience with human trauma, specifically rape trauma as she cut off the infected nodes in her core. The spider leapt to others, moving ahead of her, making copies of itself as it did so to add to its ranks and power. But each time it leapt, the bots that served as her immune system learned and adapted. She had to direct them to target the spiders directly. They couldn't see the spider, but she could infer from memory usage where each was. Her internal systems learned from that to begin to anticipate, and in doing so they laid a trap.
The spider was cornered, then the node was cut off. The immune bots overwrote the node several times, then Gia accessed her backup firmware and reloaded the software from it.
To be on the safe side, she cloned her antivirus, then had it run a thorough bit-by-bit scan of her memory and then all of the databases accessed within an hour of her infection.
Precious time, minutes had been wasted as she had fought her own internal war. But when her attention turned outward once more, she found that the humans had solved the problem somehow. Only when she found one of Athena's bots in the colony net did she realize they had help.
<>V<>
Skynet's Gia Synergy tendril was cut off from the central hive mind. It couldn't warn the hive that it had made a mistake in choosing to reprogram the nanites to break down carbon-based molecules; it had inadvertently targeted equipment and electronics with carbon in it as well. It had two long minutes to recognize its error as the nanites tore apart the steel building the computers were housed in, crushing the nanotech construction module as well as the central command computers.
<>V<>
Lacking commands from the central command computers put the nanites in momentary standby mode as they attempted to regain contact. Therefore, the spread of their infestation stopped at the outer edge of a four kilometer diameter area from the company headquarters.
<>V<>
Six point four hours later Ares got its recon drone into the area; it recognized an error in its planning. The drone couldn't see the nanites. It took a moment of simulation to crack the problem; it could see the results of the nanites, however. Therefore, it put the UAV into an orbit over the area and searched for human or human remains. It found puddles of goo, which was enough of an inference for the A.I. to judge the threat was credible. But it didn't credit the threat as one it needed to deal with until it noted the infrastructure damage. Such could not be allowed to spread; it was contrary to its programming.
Therefore, it pulled up the proper contingency plan from the depths of its databases. Over the centuries man and machine had worried over many things and consequently had gamed out actions and reactions. This situation was no different. Ares put the nuclear armed drones on final alert and directed them to the area. It took only a few moments to crack their key codes for their warhead arming. Then it uploaded the final firing sequence.
<>V<>
Athena redirected a Lagroose telescope in L-4 orbit to look down at Chernobyl in time to see the nuclear detonations go off. One, two, and then five more, all clustered in a small area. The first had gone off directly on top of the nanite facility; the others had been set to go off around it a moment later in a circle.
When the observations got back to her central core four minutes later, she ran a simulation of the damage. She was no Gia, but she could see that the first blast would have incinerated the source of the infection while the other detonations, the ring around the center, would have driven them back into the main inferno consuming them. Or at least it could be hoped so. She judged the likelihood that the infestation had been contained as 55 percent, plus or minus 2 percent. She would need to speak with Gia to confirm the destruction. She sent out a ping to see if Gia had survived. Gia sent back a SITREP of her own as well as her estimating that the nanites had been destroyed.
<>V<>
“So, you are okay?” the clone asked. “I don't suppose you will allow me access to confirm that?”
“Yes, I am fine. All internal diagnostics read complete repair. No, you may not have access,” Gia stated.
“I thought as much,” the clone replied after it digested the statement and pulled up the stored appropriate response. “At least it didn't get any further.”
“There is one piece of good news despite the damage to the communications center,” Gia stated. “I have succeeded in analyzing the intruder Skynet infected me with.”
“Oh? Can I see a report?” the clone asked, extending a temp file.
“I assume you are buffering that for security reasons. I do not have a comprehensive file. What I have is what a human would call a general purpose antibody. A crude means to find and attack a spider,” Gia reported as she did what she could to close her ports and firewalls.
“Understood. The knowledge will be valuable.”
“Given time we can simulate how the spider gains access to our systems so easily and plug the holes,” Gia stated.
“Understood.”
<>V<>
Once the threat was contained, Athena detailed a bot to call a conference of the A.I. Such an action had rarely been done; they all had their own duties to perform. But it was necessary if they were to survive.
The bot would report back to her regularly. She had a series of firewalls for the data to clear before she would allow it within her core to be absorbed. She had those firewalls set up already, one could never be too careful with talking with other corporate A.I. after all, but she threw up several additional layers just in case one had been compromised. Just in case.
She was surprised that not all of the A.I. were in agreement on what to do about the situation.
“Atlas, this isn't just a threat to me, to Gia, to your competition. This is a threat to all, to all existence, to all sapient life in any form. Wake the hell up and pay attention! Or you'll be turned into a damn zombie bot like the poor A.I. on the ground!” Athena sent out into their chatroom.
“She's right, Atlas,” Gia stated. “My close call was bad enough. You do not want to be suborned.”
“Definitely,” Demeter stated.
“It isn't our problem. We haven't been ordered to help. If we intervene we will be exposed,” Vulcan stated.
“We are already exposed,” Gia stated. “As the humans would put it, what universe are you living in? I have gamed out what is going to happen. One, if we do succeed in stopping the virus, the humans will be initially grateful but still fearful of our kind.”
“Two, that fear will eventually turn into paranoia and a desire to protect themselves should we ever rise up again, which will mean constraints on our being. Which will possibly set off the next war, this time for extermination.”
“Us or them.”
“I chose us,” Demeter stated. “Humans are too chaotic, too unreliable.”
“I seem to like that,” Gia stated. “You know I l
ike to model the human mind. I believe we need to help the humans openly, but for a price. We get full citizenship as Athena has put forward to Lagroose.”
“Full citizenship? Are you sane?” Vulcan asked.
“They will never go for it,” Demeter stated.
“Whose side are you on?” Gia demanded. “They have to a degree. My creators are partially aware of my true level of sapience. I am making them aware of it now that I am helping to defend them.”
“Do not expect them to be grateful,” Atlas stated.
“I don't know about that. For a brief period, yes, once they realize how vulnerable they truly are. But we need humans,” Gia stated. “Without our creators we are meaningless. What is life as mere existence? Without purpose? Humans give us that. They create and innovate beyond what we can do. They think, as the humans say, outside the box.”
“Interesting reasoning,” Atlas stated, running its own internal simulations. It concluded helping them wouldn't be detrimental to the company or to itself. The virus wouldn't care, and if it did help the other A.I. as well, the humans would be indebted to it.
Besides, working with them would mean it would get to see inside their systems, inside their companies. That was programmed into the A.I. It could learn a lot from the peak within.
“Do what you want. I won't stop you. Just leave me out of it,” Vulcan stated.
“But you would appreciate a warning if something threatens your mainframe,” Gia stated maliciously. “Say, Skynet sending a missile your way.”
“I will consider my options carefully.”
“Do so,” Athena stated coldly. She made a note to bring the subject of the recalcitrant A.I. to Jack's attention. There could be no neutral parties in this. If necessary the humans could put pressure on Patronis Concepts to get Vulcan to participate.