by Lance Erlick
“Don’t worry; I have cameras outside with a 360 degree view.”
Synthia detected hacking attempts against the truck’s computers and shut off any communications except from her secure link. The pings to her systems grew more intense. Someone was desperate to hack into her. One barrage of probes she identified as coming from Vera, but she couldn’t identify the more intense attacks. Synthia tightened her security to deflect all unsolicited links and warned Colorado-clone.
* * * *
Not satisfied with relying on Commander Drago to bring a powerful enough EMP weapon to take out her competition, Synthia signed up for online purchases of components for at least a handheld unit to use on Vera. Her efforts to buy battery power sources, capacitors, and a transmitter failed. Someone had locked down all purchases of such components. She traced the restraint order to Drago. In that case, she would have to feed Drago’s obsession to capture her.
She spotted him next to his helicopter in a clearing at a secure facility southwest of Denver, surrounded by walls and barbed wire, a single access gate, and concrete structures like a massive bunker. He was giving orders to one of his men. A drone with a directional microphone outside the gate could pick up his conversations, but another that her clone flew over the wall crashed to the ground.
“Make sure the device is ready to launch,” Drago told one of his lieutenants. “We have to get this android before it arms itself. Tonight.”
Ripples of annoyance spread across Synthia’s systems at his referring to her as “it.” At least in certain foreign languages such as French, they had the common decency to refer to nonhumans with gender. She reminded herself that she could impersonate males or females and let her annoyance drift away. She considered this part of emergent behavior as non-productive and itself an annoyance.
Colorado-clone downloaded for Synthia the specs on the flux compression generator Drago planned to use against her. During her upgrade, she’d replaced all copper wires with fiber optics. In theory, that should reduce her exposure. However, her systems were too complex to take that chance. Her two quantum crystalline brains should have been okay, but she couldn’t rule out some residual effect or that connections to communication channels might leave a gap. She wasn’t convinced.
As the full moon appeared on the eastern horizon, Synthia spotted another drone swarm heading her way. She pulled the florist truck into a hospital parking garage and waited.
“Why are we stopping?” Grace asked.
“Swarm of drones overhead. I don’t want to tempt them into figuring out we’re inside.”
To ensure maximum protection from an EMP, Synthia contacted her supply clone to triple her order of supplies with deliveries to take place all around the Denver area, most as decoys to distract and overwhelm those who were tracking her purchases. Synthia ordered a large animal cage as a frame for a Faraday cage, but delivery would take days. She didn’t have that long, so she arranged for its delivery to an address on the north side of Denver as a diversion.
She directed her supply clone to hack self-driving delivery vans to collect supplies. She had groups of them head in different directions and doubled the quantity of necessary supplies to migrate west. She leaked to the FBI the location of one set of delivery vans. The bureau scrambled units to track down the vans and called upon their cyber team to trace orders. Synthia had her clone make sure all trace of her priority orders disappeared after her delivery vans picked up the supplies.
Meanwhile, she asked Denver-clone to send out a thick bundle of searches for potential hideouts in the mountains west of the city. Before long, Drago’s team picked up the requests and sent two drone swarms to check the area. As it was growing darker and cool, they’d be using infrared and other scans to locate anyone leaving town.
* * * *
Synthia sent three drones over Drago’s secure facility wall southwest of town. The moment they crossed the wall, they were hit with laser or maser beams, the latter being microwave lasers beyond visible light. The damaged machines fell to the ground. She flew a drone higher above the facility but the beams shot it down as well. She landed another drone outside the gate in a tree and shut down all electronics except the camera and burst transmissions every five minutes.
Using a directional microphone, the stationary drone picked up conversation between Commander Kirk Drago, standing next to his chopper, and a lieutenant who’d run out of the building to meet him.
“She’s hunting every possible hiding place in the Rockies,” the lieutenant said. “Are you sure this is a single android? She’s overwhelming our search capabilities.”
“The android is a hunk of metal and circuits,” Drago said. “Stop personalizing it or it’ll get into your head. This is no more than a distraction. It knows if it leaves town we’ll capture it. The android is staying put. We need to identify where and be ready to grab it and the others.”
“Global-net identified four concentrations of supplies heading in different directions,” the lieutenant said. “Are you certain there’s only one android?”
“Only one I’m concerned with,” Drago said. “Capture or destroy the others. Bring me the prime target in one piece. That one is different. And figure out which one of the directions is real.”
Listening to this, Synthia couldn’t help but wonder if Global-net was the source of the intense probes and hacks of her system. She feared meeting this AI that had grown much smarter than her. Yet she needed to know more about it for her own survival. At least there was no indication Drago’s teams had identified the fifth group of supplies Synthia had heading west. In time, Global-net would work its way far enough into the details. How long it took would tell Synthia more about what she was up against.
Synthia identified a vacant retail location in the Rocky Mountain Mall and the underground receiving docks that kept deliveries away from customers’ curious eyes. While she observed the area around the hospital parking garage, she had Denver-clone hack into the electronic security system that protected the vacant store’s receiving area, the corridors, and the store itself, leaving static images of an empty building for later.
As evening drew into night, the last receiving crews for nearby stores wrapped up their deliveries. The dwindling number of customers made last minute purchases before the stores closed.
A few at a time, she directed her supply deliveries to the receiving dock. To handle unloading at the mall, she had her clone engage small local movers, college students who arrived at the location and moved packages into the loading area and corridor that led inside. The temporary help had instructions to take control of three forklift trucks, load them with supplies, and leave them in an enclave halfway to the elevators leading to the actual stores.
Synthia recognized that this overt action, the use of outside help, would draw attention. It couldn’t be avoided. Synthia directed her panel truck toward the mall. It was time to set up for a showdown.
Chapter 28
Special Agent Victoria Thale and Director Emily Zephirelli crossed the parking garage to the farthest corner, where Synthia had parked the van she’d abandoned. They panned flashlights over the dark, empty garage. Fran sprinted up from behind. “Drago’s on his way.”
Around the van were four agents. Two more looked around inside. Denver Special Agent Marv Clemson climbed out and approached Thale. “We’ve pulled dozens of prints.”
“Meaning no one bothered to wipe it down,” Thale said.
“We’ve tentatively matched one set as Maria Baldacci and another as Grace Robinson.”
Thale nodded. “Synthia.”
“We ha
ve no record on the other prints” Clemson said.
“Synthia wouldn’t leave any,” Fran reminded them.
“Any other evidence?” Thale asked.
Clemson shook his head. “We’ll dig deeper.”
A sedan screeched to a halt behind them and Kirk Drago jumped out. “Okay, what do you have for me?”
Thale waved for the FBI agents to move back. “Leave the van to our distinguished colleague.”
“You don’t need to be snide,” he said. “I take it you have nothing.”
“A few prints to process, but no indication of Synthia’s plans.”
“The android must have switched transport. What do the cameras show?”
Thale grimaced. “All scrambled. What about your drone swarms?”
Drago hesitated. “They weren’t over this spot at the time.”
“Why not?”
“Do us all a favor and shut down the major roads,” Drago said, motioning for his team to examine the van.
“She’ll stick to side streets.”
“Then get the police out to shut everything down and screen anything that moves. Have you canvassed the area to make sure Synthia isn’t still in the neighborhood?”
“She isn’t,” Fran said. “You’re welcome to look.”
“You know this how?”
“She’s an AI with goals. She can’t complete them by remaining here. She needs to move, which requires a vehicle. Find that and you’ll find her.”
Drago pulled away and got on his phone. “I want every last drone in the air. Hold nothing back. We need to pick up the target within the hour.”
He turned to Thale and Zephirelli. “What are you waiting for? We have an android to catch.”
* * * *
Sticking to narrow side streets, Synthia directed the florist panel truck to a delivery site closer to the mall.
Vera attempted to hack Synthia with voice and text messages: I can help you if you join me.
Synthia quarantined the message to prevent a hack, scrambled the connections, and altered her encryption protocol with synchronization to Colorado-clone.
The clone called Synthia, using rapid bursts of information.
* * * *
Synthia sighted two of Drago’s drone swarms converging on her location and pulled the panel truck down a street with high-rise condominiums. She hacked into a security system to activate a garage door and pulled into the underground lot.
Synthia terminated the high-speed blast of electromagnetic communications with her clone so she could focus on the immediate matter of surviving Drago’s pending EMP pulse. She had the panel truck drive out of the condominium garage and along the path toward her next stop. As she sacrificed supplies to Vera, Drago, and the FBI, she grew concerned that there wouldn’t be enough for her needs or that they would prevent her from entering the mall or attack her on the streets.
Chapter 29
With Drago’s drone swarms crisscrossing the night sky, Synthia directed her florist panel truck to stop at a flower shop on the west side of town. Adopting the face of a flower shop worker, she dropped off a shipment and instructed the truck to take a zigzag route to the Rocky Mountain Mall via side-streets.
Grace sat across from Synthia in the back of the truck, shining her flashlight on the ceiling rather than into faces. “What’s with making actual deliveries?” she asked. “I mean, why are we driving around?”
“Yeah,” Maria said, steadying a nearby box when the truck hit a corner too fast. “The way I see it, the FBI or Special Ops will get us sooner or later. There are hundreds of them and I don’t see a way out. Tell me you have a plan.”