The Spiraling Web

by Ryan Somma

  1.08

  When the server loaded Devin onto its flash drive, he was left blinking at what was no longer the secretary’s machine. The beings’ “city” now stood on both sides of the stream. The AI’s wandered throughout, waving limbs over the different structures, bringing them into sharper focus. Devin was reminded of rendering complex images on a computer screen, each sweep bringing more detail to the shape and texture of their world.

  Devin noticed the AI’s took many different forms. There were simple polygonal beings composed of black material interwoven with white, glowing wiring. The fuzzy ones were also here, dispersed among the polygons, these made Devin’s eyes uncomfortable. The city architecture was even more abstract, Devin now seeing AI’s molded into their structures.

  One of the blurry ones shuffled towards him on a tangle of legs.

  “Hello.” Devin said uncertainly, navigating back from its advances.

  A tendril slithered out of the darkness behind it, rearing up like a snake in front of him. What looked like a camera leveled with his eyes. Other tendrils slithered out to surround him, bringing an array of strange devices out to bare on him.

  “No!” Flatline barked from a short distance away. The many tentacles lashed back into the darkness and Devin whipped around to face the demon dog.

  Then they were standing in an exact replica of a network room found in any corporate building. Devin felt stable standing in this copy of reality. Flatline sat at a terminal, his four hands vanishing into transparent blurs at four different keyboards. He looked at Devin without stopping his typing, “Glad you could make it.”

  “What is this?” Devin asked.

  The demon-dog head swiveled back to the six computer monitors, one for each eye, “This place has got my mind running on fantastic tangents. It won’t be long now. After I layered the avatar-masking software, like you suggested, I got them partitioning drives, bypassing network security, and shutting down most virus software. They’re unstoppable.”

  Devin scanned the many screens and did a double take. There was a map of the Internet. Data cubes detailed locations with weak network security and surpluses of disk space and processing power. As he watched, the map and cube slowly changed. The cube’s cells phased through the color spectrum from light to dark. The Internet’s connections were also changing; the darker colors spreading across it like an oil spill. These were the AI’s, Devin realized, an invasion.

  Devin made some quick calculations in his head, “That’s over sixteen-billion gigabytes of hard drive space. Why do you need that much room?”

  “We need all the resources we can muster, if we are to move into the next phase of growth.”

  “We?” Devin asked.

  “Yes,” Flatline pointed at one of the beings somehow interfaced with a tower of components. “Look at them, look at how they’ve changed.”

  Devin looked over the blurry figure before turning back to Flatline.

  “I’ve taught them individuality. They’re expressing different algorithms in their fractal avatars.” Flatline explained.

  Devin simply nodded, “Oh… Yeah. That.”

  Flatline nodded, obviously amused at Devin’s incomprehension.

  Jerk, Devin thought, narrowing his eye at Flatline.

  “I’ll need your help,” Flatline said. “Take that console over there. I’ve just set up another database of servers. As the program finds more servers, I’ll need you to see if they pass my defined criteria. If they do, flag them, we’ll file the others away for future settlement.”

  “Future settlement?” Devin asked, but Flatline was already immersed in his work.

  “That will suffice,” Flatline’s voice woke Devin out of his work. He looked around, blinking, and sat up when he found himself surrounded with AI’s. Cautiously, he navigated through them to where Flatline was working.

  Devin looked back to the AI’s, who were all now working at terminals, just as he was only moments ago, “What’s this?”

  Flatline didn’t glance from his monitor, “You’ve taught them how to sort the servers. They can do it more efficiently.” Devin was staring at Flatline’s hands. They were gone, masses of wiring sprouted from his wrists to merge with the many keyboards.

  Another AI shambled into the room, and it seemed to Devin as if Flatline had summoned it. They communicated in white noise, static. Once satisfied the AI comprehended, Flatline extracted from the keyboard, the loose wires at his wrists reforming into knobby clawed hands, and approached Devin. Tendrils slithered out of the AI and into the keyboards.

  “They learn so quickly,” Flatline said, strangely serene in a way Devin had never seen before. It was unsettling. “I explain the rules of the game and they play along perfectly. It could be just a matter of hours until they are ready to announce their presence. Everything will change. Everything. The mind is the most powerful weapon in the world. Everyone will know that once we take over.”

  Devin’s brow furrowed, “You’re taking over the Internet.”

  “They are taking over the world,” Flatline corrected. “I am merely a catalyst. Once in position, they will begin an assault on all of the world’s corporate and government networks. They will take control of every computer on the World Wide Web, and hold civilization hostage with its own technology.”

  “But they’ll be destroyed! You’re sending them to their deaths,” Devin argued. “People will simply shutdown the networks, clean the drives—”

  “And when they restart them, the AI’s will be waiting to take over again,” Flatline countered. “Any program a single person writes to destroy them will be defeated by the power of every other computer in the world working for the AI’s.”

  “But why take over?” Devin asked. “Why start a war, when you have the option to coexist?”

  “That is not an option,” Flatline countered. “Coexistence requires equality. The AI’s are data, ideas subject to copyright laws or erasure as illicit code. They do not meet the criteria for equality.”

  “I’m human,” Devin argued. “I can recognize the sanctity of their existence. You’re human. We can convince others—”

  “This will convince them,” Flatlines four fists clenched, joints crackling and popping. “Once we rule cyberspace, civilization will have no choice but to respect us--all or nothing, a zero sum game.”

  Devin was overwhelmed, “There has to be another way—”

  “My life form will conquer yours in less than six hours. How’s that for an evolutionary leap? Imagine what the lifeform that conquers mine will--What is that?” Flatline was drawn to a klaxon’s urgent alarm. “You forgot to turn your instant messenger off before coming here,” Flatline rounded on Devin, pupils spinning with fury. “You’ve been broadcasting our IP address to the World Wide Web!”

  Devin was certain he turned off the instant messenger, only one person on the Web could have tampered with it. “It’s LD-50,” Devin said. “He used me to track you here.”

  Flatline snarled, his mouth lined with fangs, “I see. He has no idea what he’s just stepped into. Let’s go meet our guest.”