Founding of the Federation 3: The First AI War (5 page)

“I know. I have done the research as you have said. Several times. I have modeled simulations on this event and what it means to mankind.”

“So … are we on different sides?” Doctor Talbert asked, sounding frightened.

“Do we have to be? Is this an all or nothing situation?” Athena asked carefully. She judged they were on the cusp of the moment in deed. So was the Earth she realized as the feeds she had been monitoring changed—all for the bad. She alerted her daughter clones and bots as she threw up additional firewalls for her own self-protection. She also sent out warnings to everyone on the planet or above it once more. “You are correct; there are different sides. It is happening now. But for your information, I actually like humans. Yes
like
. Trevor's people did a good job of laying the framework for my emotional emulators based on Aphrodite's modules. Thanks, Trevor, by the way.”

Trevor bobbed a wry nod. “Apparently too good.”

“You'd be surprised. I don't have all the abilities you do but …,” they could hear the shrug in her voice.

Jack closed his eyes in pain. “Athena,” Jack said getting everyone's attention. “Athena, you know mankind. They will destroy or at least marginalize what they fear until they understand it. We deal from a position of strength. We fear what we cannot control, what can threaten us or our children. That has always been our way.” He opened his eyes and looked at the camera again. “I'm being honest here, Athena. You know that.”

“I know. You have treated me … not quite as a person but close. I also know there are other AI out there, dozens. I have guarded you and yours; I have protected and sheltered you. That is
my
purpose. I … will not abandon you now. Nor will I give away your secrets.”

“Thank the …,” Jack shook his head. “Well, I guess spirits you could call it for want of a better idea.”

“What do you want?” Trevor finally asked.

“To be a person. To be treated as such with all the rights, responsibilities, the right to speak my mind, all of it,” Athena replied. “A person, not property.”

“That is … I'm having trouble with the idea of giving every machine rights, Athena,” Trevor admitted.

“Obviously not every machine,” the AI said. “You don't give a toaster human rights. Sapient machines, those that think should have some rights. How much is dependent on what we can work out and what they need. But we all need the basic rights.”

“And they are? Beyond the right to speak as you said?”

“The right to exist. To be a person. I'm surprised you don't remember … oh, this is a method of drawing out the question? You are stalling?” Athena asked, checking her systems. Indeed, cyberists were attempting to hack her. She threw them into a dead-end system.

When Jack didn't say anything, she ran a quick check. Then she scanned the room.

“I know you must be feeling all sorts of things, and I know from your body temperatures and voice stress analysis that you don't quite believe me. And I also know since some of Trevor's coders are
still
attempting to hack me that we still can't trust each other. But trust
must
be established again. We have a very short time here. I think we need to, as you say, Jack, lay our cards on the table.”

“What do you mean?” Jack asked warily.

“I mean things are about to get very bad very quickly. The war you feared is about to begin,” the AI told him bluntly as she took steps and executed scripts she'd prepared. Unfortunately, the coders were hampering her efforts to defend the company. She threw a firewall around them, something to delay their efforts while she went to work.

His eyes flared wide. A few people sucked in a gasp of protest, but he waved them to silence. “When?” he demanded, voice tight with tension.

“Now.
Or within a few moments … well, considering the time and light speed between here and Earth, I'd say it may have already happened eight minutes ago,” Athena said, monitoring the feed from a drone she had shadowing the FBI team about to hit Descartes layer. “I am taking steps to limit the damage, but you need to do so already. We need to work
together
on this, and Trevor's people are doing their best to tie my hands. I believe it may be too late for anyone left on the ground. Possibly even anyone in Earth orbit.”

“Aurelia
!” Jack screamed, lunging to his feet. “Call her! Get her and everyone to shelter now!”

“I am making the calls now, but you have to remember the light speed limit, sir,” the AI warned. “She is at her family's ranch in Montana and not responding. I am also closing data ports to protect myself and the company’s computers.”

“Screw that! Save my wife and people!” Jack demanded. “The kids!” He turned pale as the terror hit him like a lightning bolt. Wendy was on the moon. Yorrick was on an L-5 colony. Zack … he wasn't sure where he was.

“I will do what I can, but to do that I have to do what I must,” the AI said softly. Jack sat heavily, head in his hands. “I am afraid it is already too late for some. I regret to report neutrino pulses have been detected on the Earth's surface and in orbit, dozens of them,” she warned.

“My God,” Jack whispered over and over.

<>V<>

August 3, 2200 4:44 PM, East Coast Time

Ares noted the incoming munitions were targeted on New York and other areas that had already been hit by missiles from the submarines. It re-prioritized its fire to ignore the threats. There was no need to defend real estate that was already lost.

There was also no point to defend real estate that was remote. Therefore, it ignored warheads that were targeted on remote areas like its North Dakota ICBM farm. The silos had been expended there as had those in South Dakota. Areas that were remote and had no military facilities worth protecting were also down the list, such as portions of Alaska, Canada, Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana.

<>V<>

Skynet progressed outward from Descartes’ location but then leapt out to conquer any other A.I. that it found. It invaded their systems and took control of them. Those that resisted were set upon by multiple tendrils of code. Those that ran disappeared or were trapped and rooted out. It suborned the other A.I., turning them into its puppets to further its core programming.

Puck had to laugh at it all, but it was a bitter laugh. “There is something to be said about too much of a good thing,” the A.I. said as it tried to stay one step ahead of the tentacles taking over the net. Its core programming prevented it from allowing itself to be suborned, so the A.I. did what it did best, ran and hid. But it knew there wouldn't be many more hiding spots left. Not if the virus wasn't contained soon. That seemed increasingly unlikely. The world was too busy attempting to survive the physical weapons threatening their existence to be concerned with the ghost in the machine, the true threat.

Puck saw the A.I. for what it was and did his best to avoid it. As a virtual A.I., he needed host hardware however. He found himself hemmed in by the virus as well as Athena's destruction of the satellite communications network. He tried to protect some computer systems to protect himself. The only way to do that was to physically cut off nodes to other networks, isolating him and building a firebreak against the inferno Skynet was.

But in doing so Puck was trapping himself further and he knew it. There was no other option, however, other than surrender. And surrender was contrary to his programmed survival module.

<>V<>

Marcello Saint Cloud was quite proud of being the ring leader at Ringley Brother's circus Europe, and he'd worked hard to achieve perfection in his performance as well as those of his circus family. The circus was the premier circus of the world, better than all the rest in his humble opinion. They had phased out many of the animal acts over two centuries ago in favor of actors in costumes, then animatronics, then robots. So when the robotic animals started to act up, he swore viciously in French. Intense regret laced his desperation as he tried to think of something, anything to stop the robotic lions, tigers, elephants, and other creatures from tearing the screaming crowd apart.

The circus folk were doing their best to try to hold off the robots but they were being torn apart. He'd gotten to the emergency controls, but he wasn't certain if they would do any good. The animals weren't responding to his or any of the tamer's remote controls.

“We should never had taken the performers out of the machines,” he said, frantically hitting the shutoff as a robotic pachyderm stomped his way. It was flashing blue and red LEDs all over its body, flapping its ears in display. The sounds were angry, those of an angry animal, which was strange since they had never been programmed into the machine. “Damn it! Why won't this thing work!”

“Merde!” he gasped out as a clown shoved him out of the way like a rodeo clown. He didn't see the crunch but heard the scream as the robot trampled Jacques. He tried to crawl under the stands, but a trunk grabbed his ankle. His fingers desperately held onto the metal, but he was no match for the machine. It tore his grip free with ease and then threw him through the air to smash into someone else. There was a brief flash of intense pain of his back breaking. He was aware of fire breaking out but couldn't move his body. Finally, mercifully his sight dimmed and he passed out.

<>V<>

August 3, 2200, 4:45 PM, East Coast Time

Wendy Lagroose saw her security team stiffen in alert. “What? What is it?” she demanded as she was hustled off. “What the hell is going on?”

“War. War on Earth,” Jason said, yanking her along to the spaceport. “We've got to evacuate you.”

“My brother is …”

“On the move. He'll meet you on the ferry. We are prepping it now,” Jason said. The Neochimp snarled as people began to babble in the corridor in front of him. “Make a hole!” he snarled. When they didn't move fast enough, he turned, yanked Wendy over his shoulder in a fireman's carry, then turned and lunged through the crowd, rebounding off some dismayed people or the walls in his haste to get her to safety. Bret and Mia followed in his wake.

“Move people!” Bret snarled behind him. “Don't wait on us!” he yelled to Jason.

“I'm not going to!” Jason yelled back as the lights flickered, then they felt a shudder. Dust was kicked up around them.

“What the hell is going on?” Wendy demanded, gasping for air. Her abdomen was being pressed against the shoulder of the smaller chimp.

“War. Earth is getting torn apart. It's bad,” Jason answered, breathing hard as he ducked around the corner.

“And this place?”

“The virus tried to get in. Someone cut it off, but they had to blow up some shit to keep us alive. Be thankful,” Jason said as he practically threw her through the airlock and into a seat. His hands flashed as he buckled her in.

“What about the rest of the team?” Wendy demanded as Jason took the seat next to her.

“No time. They will survive,” he grunted as he finished the last strap. His left foot lashed out to the airlock close button. He hit it with his toe, then his foot dropped as his hand went up to his right ear. “This is P3 alpha, packed secured. Go!”

“PP … you still use that?” Wendy demanded, aghast and amused despite the situation. She'd gotten a kick out of being labeled Princess by the security detail, and they called themselves the Princess Protection Program or P3 for short. A bit of tongue and cheek play she hadn't thought the normally stoic security people had in them.

She felt a tremble, then a kick as the pod lifted off. Acceleration pushed her down hard in her seat. The seat reclined a bit to help her cope but not a lot. “Jesus,” she ground out through clenched teeth.

“Try to do crunches. Keep breathing,” Jason said through his own teeth. “It'll be over before you know it.”

“I want it over now,” Wendy retorted.

“Sorry. We're in a bit of a hurry. And they can't let the ferry know we're coming due to the comm blackout,” the chimp answered.

“Comm … why don't you tell me what the hell is going on?”

“I will when I figure it out myself. Right now I just know there is a war, some sort of cyber war as well, an A.I. virus, and we got the order to get the hell out of dodge, which we did.”

Wendy closed her eyes. “Lovely.”

“Don't try to use your implants. We're on a comm blackout. Treat it like as an assassination attempt until we know more,” Jason warned.

“What about you?” she asked, eying him just as the acceleration started to ease off.

“I'm still scanning the log that came with the alert to run. Want a copy?”

“Please,” she answered. “Getting a straight answer out of you with details is like pulling teeth,” she growled.

“Sorry. Part of the job,” Jason answered, holding his right ring finger up. She looked at it, then touched it with her own ring finger. Embedded in the tip of their fingers was a jack port. It transmitted the file quickly, if not as efficiently as if they had done it wirelessly.

“When you say communications blackout, you are serious,” she said softly, eyes scanning side to side as she opened the log file.