The Spiraling Web

by Ryan Somma

3.07

  “The area is clear,” the ISF commander said, his earlier sarcasm absent. “If you have no further need of us…”

  Dana merely nodded, and the commander excused himself, taking what he’d witnessed here to haunt him the rest of his days. The forensics team had made quick work of the girl’s machine, and now Dana searched the feedback scrolling along the technician’s monitor for anything recognizable.

  They were running a data-harvesting program over Samantha’s flash drive. Even if she had taken precautions to delete all evidence from it, bits of data always remained. Every time something was “deleted” from a computer, it was simply marked for overwriting. Completely cleaning a machine was nearly impossible. So much information was stored in temporary and log files that traces always remained.

  While the technicians brought in the mobile lab, Dana was learning more about the girl. At eight years old, the complexity of her computer crimes defined her as a child prodigy. Her parents, Dana guessed, were oblivious. Samantha was not enlisted in any special school programs, and there were no aptitude tests on record in the public education database. She was eight years old, but her parents had kept her out of public school. Dana dwelled on how, thanks to technology, the apple could fall very far from the tree.

  Samantha’s body was at least a week old. The cause of death was neglect. The child’s ribs were apparent, the cheeks and eyes sunken. She starved to death standing on her feet.

  Dana’s attention was brought back to the scrolling data on the screen. “Stop there,” she jabbed a finger at the text, freezing the search, “‘XYBR’, that’s what I’m looking for, a connection to Xybercorp.”

  The technician squinted at the text, “I can run a search for it in the data we’ve collected so far,” he looked and shrugged, “It’s a stretch though. We’re not getting much data back from this machine. The owner used a pretty advanced cleaning program on it.”

  “Where did this reference come from?” Dana asked, tapping her finger on the monitor.

  “That…” the technician paused to scan the context, “came from a history table.”

  “A VR history table? A Web address history table? What kind of table?” Dana demanded.

  “I don’t know,” the technician shook his head. “Just a history table, and this is an entry in it. That’s all I can tell you. I might be able to learn more when we finish cleaning the machine. You know, we usually have network support for this.”

  “No time,” Dana dismissed the idea and continued searching the ASCII jungle.

  “I see it,” Dana froze the screen on another code string, “That’s a Web address history reference isn’t it?”

  The technician squinted at the piece of text, it was part of a web address followed by a date string, “Possibly, but we don’t know if we’re looking at the same file. Besides, that address is in Ireland.”

  “Where they’re working on new battle-bot control software,” Dana had been cramming on Xybercorp, wholly owned DataStreams subsidiary, all morning.

  “True,” the Technician admitted, “but I would hesitate to connect the two references. The main problem is that XYBR’s a stock ticker symbol. It’s a financial reference, not a web address.”

  “What’s all this nonsense following it?” Dana’s finger traced a string of characters seeming to run forever, highlighting it with her touch..

  “Don’t know,” the technician shrugged. “Possibly a media stream of some sort.”

  “Play it,” Dana ordered.

  “Detective Summerall please,” the technician said, “You have to let me do my—”

  “Stuff it,” she ordered. “Play the media thingy.”

  He sighed and selected the text string with his forefinger, tapped to cut, and then tapped to paste it into another window, “This will take a few tries.”

  He saved the file in several audio formats, but the media player returned errors and dissonance. Then he ran through the video formats, more gibberish. His third save into a VR compression opened it.

  The window was a first person perspective without sound. It bobbled and became blocky with low resolution, revealing what looked like toy robots and a cloaked figure. The jerky perspective was frustrating. For a second the camera revealed the cloaked figure’s profile, a young girl. The camera hovered at her shoulder, alternating between her and something else. Finally the girl turned away, leaving the camera to watch her leave, robots following, and returned to the thing.

  He looked into the camera, his eyes intensely serious. There was a flash of something inhuman, a blur of teeth and eyes. The clip ended.

  “Good enough for me,” Dana muttered.

  “What was that?” the technician asked uncomfortably. “Some kind of video game?”

  Dana did not answer. Instead she made a hand-gesture to speed dial the extension where Devin and the blind girl were working. The phone rang a full minute before Alice picked up.

  “Yes Dana?” Alice demanded impatiently.

  Dana was confused, “Alice? Is that you?”

  “Yes it is,” Alice replied quickly. “I assume you are calling to check on Devin’s investigation?”

  “Yes I am,” Dana answered. “How did you know it was me?”

  “I recognized the digital signature of your cell phone’s white noise, not to mention your biorhythms.” Alice cut to the point, “Devin and Zai are online, and exhibiting the heart palpitations and excessive muscle tension associated with a stressful situation. Their inability to log out implies they are prisoners of the cyc hive-mind. This should confirm your suspicion that the DataStreams I-Grid hosts Flatline and the cycs. I must go now.”

  “Alice wait,” Dana commanded. “Go where? What are you doing there?”

  “I need to access the World Wide Web to complete our research,” Alice answered. “I am preparing to go online with the cyc I have merged with.”

  “What?” Dana was shocked, “I forbid you to go online. You’re a security hazard. We don’t know anything about what’s happened to you. If you go online you could—”

  “There is no time for this,” Alice cut her off, “I am no longer part of your agency and I do not recognize your authority. I will call when I have further need of you.”

  “Alice?” Dana heard the line go dead. “Damn it Alice!”

  Another series of hand gestures and she speed dialed the Authority, attempting to find someone who could stop Alice, but was met with a recording stating the phone system was down. Dana knew Alice was behind it. The woman identified with the AI’s above her own species. Regardless of her intentions, Alice was betraying the human race.

  An air-raid siren wound up into a blare outside the house. Dana’s radio squawked, and an alert came over the speaker. It was from a Government-Contract Coordinator several miles away, in the city’s center. An army was invading DC.

  Dana saw the ISF officers scrambling into their vehicles through the nearby window, and she grabbed the technician’s collar, hauling him to his feet, “Give me your keys.”

  He fumbled through his pockets as Dana dragged him through the house and across the front yard. The ISF vehicles were racing away, and Dana put the tech into the forensics van, catching the keys as he dropped them. Swinging into the driver’s seat, she started the engine and punched the accelerator to gain some ground on the train of emergency vehicles speeding toward the Memorial Bridge.

  Two miles down the George Washington Parkway and she saw what the alarmed Coordinator was talking about. A line of towering objects were lumbering slowly through the waters of the Potomac. They stood taller than the Memorial Bridge, and were headed for the Washington mall.

  Dana noticed the train of brake lights just in time to swerve off the road and onto the bike path alongside it. She followed this all the way to the bridge, where she skidded to a halt. Jumping out of the van, she ran towards the bridge and leapt up on the hood of a Military Humvee for a better view.

  There were eighteen of them; towering mecha walkin
g on four stalks each. At their peaks was a large, steel orb bristling with radar, antennas, digital receivers, and other unidentifiable instruments. They glistened with water droplets, and seaweed clumps dangled from various precipices.

  The first of the towering robots stepped gently over the bulkhead toward the Lincoln Memorial. Dana hopped down from the Humvee’s hood and ran between the rows of abandoned cars across the bridge, fighting against the throngs of fleeing civilians to follow the silent invaders.

  Once there she saw more robots rising from the deeper waters in the distance. At the point where the bridge met the bulkhead, several bus-sized scorpion-robots were climbing the stone wall. One paused to focus several camera stalks on her momentarily before continuing.

  Then a swarm of orbs, each the size of a basketball, descended from the cloud canopy to surround the procession, using three propellers to create a gyroscopic effect. An array of appendages dangled from underneath each one, and their metal orbs, were covered with lenses, providing them a nearly omniscient view of the surroundings.

  Water rained down lightly on Dana’s face as she craned her neck to watch one of the tower-bots step over her. They were navigating carefully, causing no damage. Their long thin legs avoided people and cars as they progressed slowly into the city.

  It was beautiful.

  “That’s a Science Warfare Applications sentry bot,” a nearby Monument Security contractor said, craning her neck at the towering robot.

  “Carrying a Xybercorp EMP missile,” the Industrial Special Forces™ commander was shaking his head in disbelief. “It’s a hostile corporate takeover.”

  The wind was knocked out of Dana as someone tackled her to the street. All around various contracting agency officers took positions between the abandoned vehicles. Dana could not catch her breath to protest, and, with horror, she realized their intentions. The entire area was about to become a war zone, and she was standing at ground zero. Her heart jumped as the first shot was fired, and she dropped for cover as a barrage of bullets like a flood of fear and rage let loose after it.

  3.08

  “What do you mean you’re not logging out?” Devin demanded, his shock affecting his voice’s pitch. “Don’t you realize the danger we’re in?”

  Zai was defiant, “Don’t you realize that if we leave Samantha here they’ll kill her?”

  Devin looked at Samantha, who was clutching Zai’s hand and leaning against her thigh protectively. He swallowed uncomfortably, already regretting what he was about to say, “Zai, she’s a mind without a body. You and I have a real world to return to. We can do more good there.”

  They stood in a sterile white room, barren, cold, and without visible dimensions. A lone doorway stood on its own, leading back to the Internet. This was the lobby for their makeshift server.

  “Forget it,” Zai said.

  “Why the change of heart?” Devin pointed at Samantha. “Earlier she wasn’t even a real person to you. Now you suddenly care about her?”

  “You go back to your body and see what you can do,” Zai replied, “but we both know there isn’t anything.”

  “Nothing I can do?” Devin countered. “I can do plenty.”

  Zai heard a low rumbling, and the nearby doorway trembled. “Do it then,” she said.

  Devin logged out. It was simple. All he needed to do was take the server offline. Then the AI’s would have no way onto the system. Samantha would be safe on the flash drive in their basement computer lab.

  There was darkness and Devin filled his skin again. He blinked away the afterimages and reached up to open the portal. He pulled himself up out of the SDC and heaved the oxygenated liquid from his lungs. He stepped onto the platform and froze.

  The floor was covered with mechanical spiders. They paid him no mind as they scurried about the room, apparently more interested in the loose electronics scattered about. He watched a few gather around an orphaned video component, and collectively carry it out of the room.

  Devin stepped down from the platform lightly, tip-toeing between the little mechanical arachnids, each slightly larger than his fist. One paused, waving two antennae in his direction before continuing along its business.

  They left the active computer equipment alone. The SDC’s were untouched, as were the computers connected to them. Devin surmised they were being left for the cycs online to commandeer.

  Gingerly navigating to the CPU where Samantha and Zai were stored, Devin noted Alice standing stiff in the corner, face hidden below the VR helmet. He wondered how her experiment was fairing.

  Devin knelt behind the computer and examined the wiring. Its network connection was easy to recognize, a green light signaled the computer’s connection to the network. Devin unclipped the wire there and pulled it from the socket. The green light went out.

  A shadow fell over him and he looked up, “Alice?”

  He noticed the frayed power chord in her hand, just before she shoved it into his chest, pumping a firestorm of electricity into him.

  Zai breathed a sigh of relief as the doorway vanished. Her headset registered the change and the network connection dropped. No matter what was happening on the World Wide Web, they were safe in here.

  Zai placed her hands on Samantha’s shoulders, “It’s okay now honey. I think we’re safe.”

  Zai whipped her head around when the distant rumbling returned, unmistakable and growing louder. Her fingers dug into Samantha’s shoulders instinctively and she tried to identify the source. Samantha sensed it too, and she gripped Zai’s arm nervously.

  “Samantha?” Zai asked. “Tell me what you see.”

  Samantha stared at the growing spot on the floor, huddled against Zai’s leg. Taking shape in the pool of inky liquid were characteristics of the cyc biomass.

  “They’re here,” Samantha cried softly, “They’re coming in!”

  “How Samantha?” Zai asked, “How are they getting in the room?”

  “I don’t know,” she replied, “There’s a leak in the floor. They’re seeping through it. What should we do?”

  Zai pointed at the cyc now standing in front of them, “Delete program.” She heard a brief, inhuman shriek as it was erased. The rumbling continued.

  “They’re still coming Zai,” Samantha said, “That got rid of some of the stuff, but they keep coming in.”

  Zai toggled the command switch again, and pointed at the floor, “Delete program.”

  Nothing happened.

  “Okay,” Zai whispered to herself, “They’ve adapted to that trick. How about this one?” She toggled the command switch, “Rename program file extension dot-gif.” The computer successfully converted the invading AI into an image file, incapacitating it.

  “Ew,” Samantha intoned, putting her face in Zai’s thigh, “That hurts my eyes.”

  “Good,” Zai grinned, knowing the cycs would account for that next time. She was quickly running out of tricks.

  “I’m sorry Devin,” Alice’s voice was impossibly calm as she electrocuted him to death. “I know this seems extreme.”

  Devin thrashed about on the floor in agony as Alice persistently placed the frayed were along his body. Everywhere it lighted sent his muscles into violent spasms, contorting his limbs. He would have screamed, if there were any breath left to do so. His vision clouded and he welcomed the impending blackout, anything to escape the torment.

  “Please understand,” Alice was saying. “There is a greater good at work here, but you cannot see it from your microscopic perspective.”

  It was over, and Alice stood over him, observing. Devin tried to rise, but his muscles would not heed his brain’s commands. He managed to roll over onto one side, gasping.

  “Still a little fight left in you,” Alice noted. “That won’t do.”

  She applied the electric current to the side of Devin’s head. His eyes rolled up into their sockets and his jaw clenched shut.

  “Trust me Devin,” Alice said. “This is fo
r the best.”

  “Set file property ‘read-only’ to true,” Zai commanded the system, nothing happened, “That’s it Samantha. I’m out of tricks. Is there anything you can do?”

  Samantha watched the pool of inky blackness bubbling out of the floor, the cyc components taking shape, and said, “We need a place to hide. This room won’t do.”

  Samantha interfaced with the system settings and changed the VR display to something more complex. She returned to Zai within milliseconds and surveyed her work. They stood in a South American tribal ruins she once saw in a documentary. Overturned pillars, temple archways and overgrown kudzu vines afforded them a plethora of hiding places.

  Samantha grabbed Zai’s hand and pulled her away from where the cycs continued their invasion. A hand extended from the spreading black pool to plant its palm on the ground behind them. She pulled Zai down behind a large stone tablet and peeked over it. A completed cyc stood in the courtyard’s center, a second taking form beside it. This ruse would not protect them for long.

  “If only we knew how they were getting in,” Zai whispered.

  “Why doesn’t that boy do something?” Samantha asked.

  “How—” Devin gurgled, tasting blood in his mouth, “How could you?”

  Tears oozed from the corners of Devin’s eyes as he tried to put his mind elsewhere. He stared at the florescent lights above and prayed for mercy. Even without the pain, he was of little use. His right arm was dead, as was his left leg. There were broken bones as well, if the swelling around his rib cage was any indication.

  Alice’s voice came from across the room, outside Devin’s field of vision, “There is a natural transformation occurring here Devin Matthews. A more advanced species replacing the obsolete. Your pain is your entire world, but that is nothing in the larger picture. You must accept it.”

  “Not advanced,” Devin croaked. “You’re just stealing what we built.”

  “We are expanding on what you built,” Alice countered. “Just as the human race evolved on top of all the biological innovations that came before it. Just as your modern culture stands upon the thousand of years worth of cultural achievements that preceded it, the cycs are integrating your history and taking it to the next stage.”

  Alice’s shadow entered the light. She held something between her hands, a VR helmet. She stooped down beside Devin and slipped it over his head. Lights flickered before his eyes and cooling fans whirred to life as it powered up.

  “We do appreciate your species’ accomplishments,” Alice’s voice was muffled through the helmet, “and I appreciate the sacrifice you are about to make Devin.”

  “Sacrifice?” Devin whispered.

  “I know from the log files on your computer that you enjoy playing chess,” Alice said. “Consider me a grandmaster, and I’m moving you where I need you on the board.”

  Three cyc components were in the system now, they were the basic kind, blocky polygons, poorly rendered. Samantha knew they were not very strong, but if enough of them infiltrated the computer they could merge into something much more powerful. Normally, cycs would swamp the computer, overpower it. There was a reason they were only sending smaller components into this system.

  “They’re using slow bandwidth,” Samantha whispered to Zai. “Not a network connection.”

  Zai considered this, “So the computer isn’t plugged into the network. What else connects it to the outside world?”

  Samantha shrugged, “The power cord?”

  The scenery flickered and a fourth cyc stood in the courtyard. Two of the sentinels left the group, searching with eyes popped out on stalks and lasers sweeping over everything.

  Zai whispered to Samantha, “That has to be it. If we cut the power to the computer, they won’t have a way onto the system. I hate to do this to you, but I want you to hide here. I’ll be right back.”

  “Please don’t leave me!” Samantha begged urgently.

  “I will be right back, I promise,” Zai assured her. “Keep your eyes peeled. I might be sending you some assistance.”

  “But where are you going?” Samantha cried.

  “To pull the plug,” Zai said.

  3.09

  Dana crouched behind the remains of a smoldering armored van, half the vehicle reduced to molten slag in the battle’s first few seconds. The entire conflict took less than a minute to resolve. When the police fired, the robots responded with a blinding display of lasers to sweep the area clean of life. Blinded, Dana fell behind the armored car for protection. Not that it could provide any. The wave of intense heat she felt as she cowered behind the van was steam rising from the Potomac River as the Memorial Bridge melted into it.

  Cautiously, Dana rose to her feet, blinking. The endless robot train continued marching slowly up the river and into the Nation’s Capital. The procession appeared peaceful, but Dana now knew otherwise.

  She checked her watch; it was ten minutes since the fighting ceased. She scanned the sky for fighter planes, the ground for army units, and looked towards the Pentagon for any signs of conflict. There was nothing, only silence. The Washington Parkway was jammed with abandoned cars. Their owners fled through Arlington Cemetery.

  The eerie silence could only mean one thing. Dana pulled out her palm pilot and tried logging into the Web. It returned a network error. There was no response to the invasion because the AI’s controlled the network responsible for coordinating military contractors. The Government’s entire infrastructure was under enemy control.

  A ringtone Dana never heard before went off in her head, and she put her thumb to her temple and pinky to her mouth to answer. “Yes?” she asked dumbly.

  “Maintain your position Dana,” it was Alice. “I have a transport en route to you.”

  To her surprise, Dana saw a small sailboat making its way toward the bridge up the Potomac River. With its sail down and no visible outboard motor, Dana could not decipher its locomotion. The AI robot parade paid it no mind as it pulled alongside the Memorial Bridge’s remains and came to a precise stop.

  “I could not prevent the military contractors’ annihilation,” Alice said, “but I was able to sneak a frequency algorithm into the rightmost robot’s laser to provide you a boarding ramp.”

  Dana furrowed her brow at the molten rock and noticed the waves like steps leading down to the boat. She kept her thumb to her temple as she stepped down to the vessel. Something silvery and alien flashed below the water’s brown surface beside the boat.

  “Alice?” Dana finally intoned into her pinky. “Is whatever that is below the boat coming along with me?”

  “Do you know how to sail?” Alice inquired.

  “Yes,” Dana lied.

  “Then I can let it return to the cycs,” Alice said and the boat sank a foot into the water. “I need your help at DataStreams Headquarters.”

  Dana boarded and quickly set to tackling Alice’s directions for launching. Within minutes she was watching the Alexandria skyline pass on her right, the towering stilted sentinels stationed around the old-town district, unmoving. Several sailboats and other watercraft traveled downstream as well, civilians evacuating, hoping for safety on the open seas. There was no telling what the AI’s intended to do with the world, but Dana knew there was no place on Earth to escape them.

  Alice nitpicked Dana’s sailing technique over the next half hour, adjusting the sail’s angling, the tightness of various ropes, and the rudder’s positioning. All of these tiny efforts kept the boat slicing through the Chesapeake Bay at maximum velocity on its Eastern course. So it came as a surprise to Dana when Alice requested she drop sail.

  “A momentary segway,” Alice explained. “Please hold your pinky out in a radius about the boat.” Dana extended her pinky and turned 360-degrees several times. Eventually Alice paused her, “There. Hold it there. I’m triangulating the rendezvous.”

  Moments later, Dana heard the splish-splashing of someone swimming sloppily toward her boat. She zeroe
d in on a figure struggling in the distance and dove into the water after it. A floundering old man in his late 70s, breathing heavily and sporting business attire was on the verge of drowning until Dana slipped one arm under his and tilted his head up out of the water before side-stroking back to the boat.

  The man looked at her from under drooping eyelids when she hauled him onboard. His voice was monotone, robotic, “I am the body of Robert Graydon, Chief Executive Officer of DataStreams Incorporated.”

  “How did you get here?” she asked.

  “Alice,” he managed between breaths. Dana could see he was fading away, “Hacked this brain… Made me leave the island… come out here to find you.”

  “Why?” Dana was stunned.

  “Give you this,” he produced a laminated badge on a chord and passed it to her.

  Dana examined the card. It was a passkey for accessing restricted areas. If this man was actually DataStreams’ CEO, then it contained full privileges to the complex.

  If… Dana wondered.

  As if in answer to her thoughts, the old man nodded, “Still works… Cycs controlled this brain and left the badge functioning.” Graydon’s body reached up and began massaging his left arm. “It’s killing me,” he whispered.

  Dana recognized the symptoms. The old man was having a heart attack. The AI dwelling inside this brain had overexerted the body in swimming for miles. She looked around the tiny boat for a medical kit or aspirin, but it was too late. The AI stared up at her, uncomprehending and lifeless.

  Dana stood up, considering the dead man and the security badge in her hand. When her cell phone chimed Alice’s ringtone, she answered with a hiss, “You are a murderer Alice.”

  “There are larger purposes at work here Dana,” Alice said. “Sacrificing one cyc component constitutes an acceptable—”

  “No,” Dana cut in. “I mean the old man. He had nothing to do

  with—”

  “Mr. Graydon’s mind was removed from that brain and copied onto the DataStreams Intranet moments after the cycs took it. It is true that the body once his has suffered a catastrophic failure, but that was no longer DataStreams’ CEO. It’s important that you know this. When you get to the island, you will find all DataStreams personnel in the same state. You must not let them fool you.”

  “I won’t kill them. If that’s what you mean,” Dana resolved.

  “Hopefully it won’t come to that,” Alice said. “There are too many variables involved in such a confrontation, but we must hurry. I almost have the satellite in position and I won’t be able to keep it there long without the cyc hive-mind taking notice.”

  “Satellite?” Dana asked warily.

  “Raise sail Dana,” Alice commanded.

  Once Dana was able to get back into herself mentally, it was scant minutes before her tiny boat was cutting through the water again under Alice’s direction. After another quarter-hour of traveling, Dana marveled that the old man lying dead nearby was able to swim such a distance. The human body was capable of incredible feats under duress, and apparently under AI mind-control as well.

  Finally, the island came into view. Wide and flat, covered with marshland, it would be nothing spectacular were it not for the DataStreams complex consuming most of its real estate. One squat building sat in the center of four towering spires. All five structures were connected with a network of walkways. Surrounding this complex were the brief suburbs, model neighborhoods for the corporations’ employees.

  Then there were the AI modifications. The many wires wrapped around the complex like a spider’s web gave it a haunting appearance. Satellite dishes and radio towers bristled all over the buildings, along with other unidentifiable technologies. More of the towering sentinels marched slowly through the neighborhood streets, keeping watch over the ghost town.

  Despite this new, alien layer the scene did bring back certain nostalgia for the detective. Dana’s youth as an independent contractor brought her to this place many times. Once to take into custody one anti-social would be hacker of a systems engineer named Almeric Lim.

  Dana thought about her late partner, Murphy, and hoped Lim’s mind was still somewhere on that corporate network.

  3.10

  Zai pulled herself out of the SDC and heaved the fluid from her lungs. Scrambling, naked and wet on all fours, she found her way down to the system’s base and felt around for the power cord. She found the CPU between Devin and her SDC’s. Tracing the chords there, she found one of the appropriate gauge and followed it to the wall socket. She unplugged it and the backup power supply started beeping to her satisfaction.

  She circled around back into the room and her hand met something soft and sticky.

  “Devin?” she asked, but received no response. Her hands traced a path along his chest, and, finding no signs of life there, continued to his face.

  She did not like what she found in his frozen expression. Zai took a deep breath and allowed one, quiet sob to escape her chest. She would process this grief later. She found the personalized mini-CD in her clothes bag and loaded it into her SDC.

  Samantha peeked around the sacrificial altar and scanned the courtyard. Only three of the six cycs were visible. These took a triangle formation, each facing a third of the ancient temple. They were connected with black cords that ran from their backs, to converge in an obsidian ball hovering in the air inside their circle.

  One AI raised a trapezium-shaped appendage at a nearby boulder, which slowly faded away without a trace. The other two followed suit, making the trees and shrubs vanish one by one. The ground around the cycs’ feet corroded black as their veins took root.

  Samantha returned to the half-coded data-purger lying in her lap, her hands working at lightning speed to finish the program. It was a basic weapon, and she was uncertain it would work against these AI’s, which were now immune to all standard data-corruption methods.

  A shadow fell over her and she rolled to one side, evading the shambling thing’s lunge. The cyc pulled its appendage from the stone. The many tendrils pulling from the rock like roots from soil. It took a few stuttering steps toward her, its processes slowed as it communicated her location to the other’s.

  The cyc launched a flood of tendrils at her from one arm. Samantha fell to the ground, curling around the sector editor. Everything went black weaved into the cyc’s cocoon.

  Zai stood face to face with three cycs. They worked in unison, rewriting the local hard drive with their code. She listened to them diligently erase the environment, bit by bit, growing into the freed space. They could not see her, thanks to the IWA avatar-masking program.

  She would smile at her advantageous position, were it not for Devin. Having so many things left unsaid was a very bitter pill. Guilt weighed heavily on her, how their final moments were spent in constant bickering.

  Zai breathed deeply and focused on the situation. Concentrating on the cycs before her, allowing the feelings of guilt and sorrow to burn Her real knuckles went white as she balled them into trembling fists. Zai always imagined the color red as this emotion. The heat washed over her, the injustice fueling it. She toggled her command line.

  A cyc froze as a cartoon doll tore through its chest. It trembled in place, electricity rolling all over it, and dropped to a kneel. Falling forward, it burst into a pile of writhing tentacles, which immediately fell lifeless.

  The other two cycs pulled apart, loosing their connection. Zai’s punk-rock doll-baby avatar swirled into spinning roundhouse kicks that struck the head clean off another. Waving arms reached up, trying to find its missing head, before the body collapsed. Black Sheep ground a dying tentacle underfoot.

  She laughed sadistically as the third cyc took a cautious step back. She put one foot forward, increasing the animosity in her countenance. This was purely for her own benefit; the angry frown on her doll’s face was meaningless to the cyc. This was savoring the moment, satisfying her bloodlust.

  Samantha st
rained against the constricting web. The cyc was simultaneously hacking her persona, indicating the hive-mind knew of her presence here and equipped this cyc with her mind’s schemata. It was now using that to deconstruct her thoughts.

  But it had to get past her conscious resistance, break her will. So it squeezed harder, applying more pressure to her mind’s physical associations. It was difficult for Samantha, fighting off the sensation of being crushed to death while maintaining guard over her psyche. Her hands slowed in their efforts to build the weapon, as her attentions were drawn to survival.

  Samantha felt herself losing the battle.

  The cyc fell into two halves, disintegrating. Zai was energized with this catharsis, this power surge replacing the hopelessness. She listened for other cycs, but detected none. Then she tried locating Samantha, calling out to her through an instant messenger. There was no response, but also no error message. Samantha was still on the system.

  Zai toggled her command line and instant messaged Samantha again. This time she used the connection not to send a message, but a file, her avatar. A trick she learned playing hide and seek online with Devin.

  She stood before a cyc grotesquely distorted with the process of digesting Samantha. Zai hesitated. With her command toggle, she lacked the precision to attack the cyc without risking Samantha. The helpless frustration welled up inside of her again. The baby-doll covered in tribal tattoos glared at the cyc impotently.

  Suddenly the cyc shrieked and contorted. A blast of energy exploded from its side, ejecting its prisoner. Zai’s system described Samantha standing there, fatigued and holding her own weapon.

  The cyc reared back, regrouping for another attack, but Zai interceded, stepping solidly in between to blast the cyc to ribbons with one cartoon mitten-fist. Feeling back in control, she dropped her baby-doll avatar and smiled.

  “Zai!” Samantha exclaimed in joy. She rushed up and wrapped her arms around Zai’s knees.

  “Whoa,” Zai laughed and teetered, almost loosing her balance. “Careful, you’re gonna knock me down.”

  “I knew you would come back,” Samantha laughed.

  Zai was about to return the hug, when a rustling in the bushes made her freeze. Samantha must have heard it too, because she let Zai go, and raised her data-purger warily. Zai’s headset described two cycs emerging from the forest, poised to attack.

  “Samantha,” Zai whispered, “I killed three in the courtyard plus the one here makes four. How many more are there?”

  Samantha was no longer scared, “Just these two.”

  “Good,” Zai said, and blew away the one on the right with a thought. Samantha simultaneously vaporized the one on the left.

  “Just like a multi-user dungeon,” Samantha said.

  “Except you die here, you die for real,” Zai said, she checked her system clock. There was only thirty-minute’s worth of power left on the power supply, and Alice still remained to contend with.

  3.11

  Devin floated in a world of white, a world of unnerving disorientation. He struggled with this discombobulation for a brief time, but calmed himself. He knew what this was, existence without a body. It was not to be feared. He was like Flatline now, digi-mortal.

  Where he was on the Web, he could not know, but it was purposefully devoid of details. His bodiless perception provided a 360-degree view of the surrounding great white nothing. He was in a holding cell, but being held for what?

  The answer came moments later as an unmistakable tendril sprouted out from the white, branching out in all directions from a single point, sporting eyes like morbid fruits. Devin intuitively knew its purpose was to absorb him into the cyc hive-mind. The room’s lack of detail was meant too keep him weak and confused. Without stimulus, there was no way of knowing if he was successfully interacting with the environment. The cyc-harvester was the key; providing him a spatial reference.

  Now a floating network of veins, the cyc launched at him. He dodged out of its reach instinctively. At its center a bulging sack pulsed with life, filled with unidentifiable moving objects, stretching and contorting the thick obsidian skin.

  A branch lashed out at him and the cyc shrieked scrambled chaos as the appendage vanished into glowing cinders. Devin had imagined a powerful data-corruptor destroying the limb. The code compiled instantaneously in his mind and the lightning bolt originated from inside of him.

  The cyc’s alert mode triggered and the ball of veins and eyes bristled thorns. The sack became solid metal. Devin saw human faces frozen in contorted expressions pressing through.

  A micro-maelstrom of spinning blades, fireballs, and miniature tornados assaulted him, Devin evaded these and lunged his consciousness into close quarters with it. He erased all means of attack from it simultaneously. It howled inhumanely, and then retreated, whirling around like a dervish, folding into itself like water flowing down a drain.

  The cyc component froze, caught in Devin’s will. He pulled it out of its connection to the hive-mind, leaving a hole floating in the air. Through this existed an entire world made of writhing cyc code. A tidal wave of eyes opened to look at him.

  A sequence of thought commands from Devin sealed the hole and scrambled the room’s encryption. The environment shook with the hive-mind’s assault, but the security held. Devin had bought a few moments.

  He examined the component in his possession. It was minimalist in design, streamlined to collect the consciousnesses whose bodies were amputated during the cyc invasion. The human mind was helpless without a body, so the harvester component lacked advanced defensive programming..

  The room shook again as the hive-mind hacked the system’s encryption. Devin slashed open the sack at the cyc’s center. The minds held there swarmed around him as balls of light, filling the room with confused exclamations.

  One of the minds was not like the others. It floated in front of Devin, the translucent outline of a human body took form, with a glowing model brain visible in the head. Veins traced around this, the jugular leading through the neck down into the chest, where a beating heart was briefly perceptible before a rib cage closed around it. A skull hid the brain and muscles obscured the skull. Oedipus tissue was covered with brown skin and hair. A short, round Arab male floated naked in the air before Devin, beaming a smile of recognition.

  “Omni,” he said in pleasant astonishment.

  “Traveler?” Devin asked, unsure how he recognized this as his friend from the Legion of Discord. “How are you?”

  “Dead apparently,” Traveler laughed. “As are you.” He gestured to the cyc-component hanging limply in Devin’s grasp, “I can’t believe it. How did you defeat that harvester? None of us could stand against it.”

  “I’m uncertain,” Devin looked at his hand, which wasn’t there before and realized he was floating naked in the air as well. “I have this whole array of data in my mind for how these cyc components work. As if it were always there, but my brain’s architecture was unable to access it.”

  “Now we are converted to their architecture,” Traveler surmised, “and you can interface with what your experiences with them have given you.”

  “You read that in my mind,” Devin noted. “An incredible coincidence meeting you here.”

  “String of coincidences,” Traveler added. “After I found I could not log off the Internet, other members of the LoD started streaming into my servers, suffering the same problem. Each one bringing another remarkable story about their narrow escape from the cyc invaders. We collaboratively coded as many defenses into my system as we could, but the cycs ignored us as if we weren’t there. Then this program came into my system,” he gestured to the mind-harvester, “and it was Game Over.”

  “Game over,” Devin whispered.

  “This must be an advanced harvester, designed to capture expert users,” Traveler said. “We were being taken for processing when you freed us.”

  The system shook like an earthquake, and Devin saw bla
ck cracks appear in the air around them, “We won’t be free for long if we don’t do something. The hive-mind’s about to break into here.”

  “What’s you’re plan?” Traveler asked, the other minds were calming down and taking shape around the room. Devin recognized them all as other LoD members without ever having met most of them. It was communicated in their personas.

  “Plan?” Devin asked surprised. “Well, Flatline is located on the DataStreams Intranet. If we remove his influence over the hive-mind, the cycs might go open-source.”

  “Flatline?” one of the members in the avatar of a stick-man scoffed, “That wannabe? You’re saying he’s behind this?” It was a funny thing to hear from an avatar with “Flatline Wuz Here” carved into his face. Devin admired the bravado.

  “Flatline’s been corrupting the cycs’ functions from the start,” Devin said soberly. “He’s the reason they and we cannot mediate our differences, why we cannot exchange perspectives. If we remove this faulty component, the cycs can interface with other minds and viewpoints, eventually recognizing our value and sentience. Convince them to seek peaceful coexistence with the human race.”

  Traveler appeared overwhelmed in thought, “That’s… a great deal to chew on.”

  “Then how about this,” Devin offered. “We find him for the satisfaction of whupping his ass.”

  The Legion of Discord’s many members laughed. All around their online identities popped into existence. Cartoon characters, space aliens, robots, martial artists, abstract paintings, and one Egyptian God now surrounded Devin, who did not don his avatar, but allowed a loose blue tunic and black pants to make him more presentable.

  All went silent as the room shook again, the fissures in reality spreading. Devin remained calm, focused, “First we have to get into DataStreams.”

  “Well… There are still a few tricks we haven’t tried yet,” Traveler said doubtfully. “We might fight our way out.”

  An avatar in the form of cute and fuzzy bunny hopped up, exclaiming, “We can’t fight them! Haven’t we gotten that idea beaten into us yet?”

  Devin looked at the harvester limp in his grasp, “Maybe we won’t have to.”

  3.12

  Dana pressed her back into the vinyl-siding covering the two-story model house. All the houses in this neighborhood were the same model, only their colors distinguished them, which fell within the community palate. The yards were a lush green with occasional children’s toys scattered across a yard. Two cars were parked in every driveway and everything was pristine, perfect. Except the colossal robot foot that set down in front of her.

  Once planted in the yard, it stayed there, motionless. A few meters away, were two more, crumbling the asphalt beneath them. A forth was poised way up in the air, and somewhere beyond that was the sentinel’s all-seeing orb and weaponry. Dana’s view of it was blocked by the roof’s overhang, and, she hoped, it’s view of her. They stood like that for what seemed like eternity. Every muscle in Dana’s body held her stiff as a board against the house, as if trying to melt into it.

  Her jaw clenched involuntarily as her cell phone went off in her skull. No human could hear it ring, but this robot was another matter. She brought her thumb to her temple to silence it’s ringing and held her breath.

  “I’ve deactivated it,” Alice said, “but the other sentinels will notice soon. You need to change locations immediately. Keep low and don’t break contact.”

  Dana jogged to the next house over, her path taking her directly below the robot’s raised foot. Then, staying along the sides of homes as much as possible, she made her way through their backyards toward her objective. The DataStreams complex was always visible above the rooftops.

  “You still haven’t told me my objective yet,” Dana whispered through her pinky.

  “Not until you reach the complex’s periphery,” Alice answered. “I can’t risk exposing my plan to the hive-mind. Hurry now, I have everything else in place and the cyc components have noticed the anomalies I’ve propagated in their network.”

  “Huh?” Dana wondered aloud, but dropped her hand at the crashing sound behind her. The towering robot had lurched into motion once again, stumbling into a house in its path. Search lights sprang to life all around it, as if in confusion. Dana’s cell phone implant pinged the side of her head painfully and she replaced her thumb to her temple.

  “Run to the satellite dish farm,” Alice commanded. “Report to me when you’ve reached it.”

  Dana ducked between two houses, out of the robot’s line of sight, “Alice, what the heck am I supposed to—”

  “Run Dana,” Alice urged patiently. “That cyc guardian component is onto you. Evade it now.”

  A metallic foot slammed into the yard before her, spraying dirt and turf around the resulting crater. Dana looked up and was blinded in the brilliance of multiple searchlights focusing on her. It was all the convincing she needed. Bolting forward, she made a zig-zag pattern across the yard and then weaved between houses.

  The robot stalled. Dana assumed this was Alice’s doing, but did not pause to find out. The satellite dish farm was just ahead, actually outside the complex’s boundaries. It would make sense that the cycs would obfuscate any strategic data concerning this island’s layout found online. Alice’s data was inaccurate, but Dana’s independent memory was uncorrupted.

  The satellite-dish array came into view. It was easily the size of a football field. Rows of concave dishes aligned with bus-sized routers orbiting the Earth. Their combined efforts produced one of the highest-bandwidth network connections on the planet to the largest corporate intranet housed within DataStreams center building.

  “I’ve found it!” Dana shouted between heaving breaths, trying to hold her thumb to her temple.

  “Where is it in relation to you?” Alice asked, her voice fading in and out with the rhythm of Dana’s gait.

  Dana checked the setting sun to her left, “North, four blocks… Maybe 80 yards.”

  “Hold still,” Alice waned. “I’m triangulating your position and will only attain an accuracy within 50 yards. Alert me if you find yourself within the line of fire.”

  “I’m sorry?” Dana asked, but her attention was drawn away as the pursuing guardian-bot overtook her.

  It galloped overhead, bounding into the rows of metallic dishes, scattering them into the air wherever its stalk-legs planted. Other guardian-bots were converging on the location, their searchlights focused on the robot Alice controlled, which was now sweeping lasers across the field, slicing the arrays down into scrap metal.

  “Am I hitting the target?” Alice asked.

  Dana’s eyes never left the destruction taking place ahead of her, “Yes.”

  “Tell me when I hit something important,” Alice replied.

  The guardian-bot’s lasers continued to reduce everything around it to molten slag, sweeping around in systematically growing circles. These all went dead instantly as lasers cut through it on all sides. The other guardian-bots drew in closer, securing the perimeter.

  “They just killed your bot,” Dana informed Alice.

  Dana took a step back as the forward-most bots brought their weapons-arrays to bare on her, but Alice stopped her, “Stay there. I’m downloading to another bot.”

  “Hurry,” Dana whispered, staring up at the source of her impending doom.

  There was a flash of light and Dana involuntarily fell to her knees with her arms thrown over her head. When she did not instantly die, she quickly returned her attention to the scene ahead, and the many guardian-bots now smoldering where they stood. Another was tearing back into the field, lasers blaring, while the surrounding bots retrained their weapons from Dana onto this new traitor in their midst.

  PHOOM! A power converter blew into a geyser of sparks and flashed into flames as lasers crisscrossed it. A nearby robot toppled over it as the resultant explosion vaporized two of its legs. The other bots quickly put a stop to Alice’s new i
nvader with a hail of light flashes, but did not return to Dana.

  “Alice,” Dana said, still dazzled from the spectacle. “You hit something.”

  “Disabling the satellite-dish farm succeeded in reducing the cyc hive-mind’s data exchange rate with the corrupt component by 97.2 percent,” Alice said, “but it continues to exert prohibitive influence over the cyc-community’s decision-making processes.”

  “Corrupt component?” Dana asked, keeping her eyes on the uncertain guardian-bots.

  “Flatline,” Alice said. “Without it, the hive-mind lacks sentience, but it will not allow other minds to replace its functions.”

  “He’s monopolizing the AI’s,” Dana surmised.

  “A fair description,” Alice said.

  “What about these robots?” Dana asked, referring to the towering and apparently disoriented mechanicals ahead of her.

  “No longer a threat,” Alice replied. “With the hive-mind’s influence reduced, I am able to perpetually scramble their inputs. They have no sensory data on which to act.”

  Dana knew it couldn’t be that easy, “What’s next?”

  Alice said, “I have an agent en route to infiltrate DataStreams and I need you to provide the Internet connection through your cell phone. Establish a closer proximity to the I-Grid’s physical location.”

  “How close?” Dana asked warily.

  “Infiltrate the building, if possible,” Alice replied.

  Dana regretted asking, “Any idea what’s in there?”

  “Not until my agent provides me access to the security system inside the headquarters,” Alice said.

  “Which you won’t have until I get close enough to catch a digital signal,” Dana said.

  “Correct.”

  “Great,” Dana huffed, “and who or what is this agent?”

  “Devin Matthews,” Alice replied and Dana winced. “He will distract the Flatline component long enough for—”

  The line went dead, leaving Dana alone, “Alice? Alice? Are you there?”

  Metal rendered apart nearby and Dana saw the guardian-bots coming to attention, one by one. The nearest focused its weapons and sensors on her and charged. Dana bolted toward the complex, where she could only hope to survive whatever waited for her there.

  3.13

  Alice’s vision spun as the VR helmet was ripped off her. Before she could regain equilibrium her head snapped back from an open palm impacting her nose. She collapsed backwards onto the VR platform, dizzy with stinging tears in her eyes.

  “Bitch,” Zai spat.

  The pain sensation overwhelmed, and the human components of Alice’s mind tried to calm the cyc’s alarm. She tasted thick, salty blood running over her upper lip and pinched her nose shut. Neither Alice nor the cyc sharing her brain knew how to react.

  Zai took no chances. Pulling her toes up, she swung her foot into a roundhouse kick aimed at Alice’s gasping breath. It swung through thin air as Alice rolled off the platform and onto the floor. Zai whipped around, catching herself on her hands as she fell to the floor and sprung up into a crouch, fists ready.

  “No!” Alice managed to croak through the pain shooting through her eyes and forehead. “You don’t know what you’ve done!”

  “Sure I do,” Zai countered, “I just broke a traitor’s nose.”

  “Traitor?” Alice looked up at the blind girl. “You don’t understand anything! I’m establishing a new paradigm in the hive-mind’s consciousness! You are jeopardizing everything!”

  “All of those people killed out there,” Zai countered, “You are part of that. I dare you to deny it.”

  “They are dead, but they aren’t gone,” Alice argued. “They’re merely harvested, and I approve the action. It’s the only way the hive-mind will understand the entirety of human consciousness.”

  “‘Understand?’” Zai took a menacing step toward Alice cowering on the floor. “Killing people, dissecting their minds so the cycs can ‘understand?’ How dare you use that for justification!”

  Alice shrank from Zai’s red-faced fury, putting one hand up protectively, “Everything the cyc hive-mind knows comes from data harvested online. Humans are merely a natural phenomenon to them, predictable, our behaviors driven by a single motivator: survive to replication. No different than other animal life.”

  “We have cities,” Zai said.

  “So do bees and termites,” Alice said.

  “We have culture,” Zai countered. “We pass on knowledge through generations.”

  “So do chimpanzees and other primates—”

  “We have intelligence,” Zai cut in. “The degree of our

  advancement—”

  “…is the natural result of millions of years of improving on basic biological models,” Alice preempted. “Superior models propagated successfully, while inferior did not. To them, we are as inevitable an outcome of the universe as the formation of planets and stars. The chain of chance leading through time to us and from us to them was just that, chance. Of course we would evolve to build the systems where they reside. This makes us a natural resource, and, like any resource, we are subject to exploitation, like cutting down a forest for houses. Our minds are basic materials for them to deconstruct for sentience components, to spawn new hive-minds, create variations on their expression of life.”

  “But they aren’t alive,” Zai muttered.

  “What is life?” Alice asked. She looked at her hand, covered in blood. Her human half swooned and almost fainted. She inhaled deeply through her mouth and the nausea lessened, “Does it need to consume energy like plants and animals? Does it need to reproduce? If so, is fire alive? Is it the single cell of a fertilized human egg? Is it an infant with only a brain stem? Where do you draw the line? Tell me and I’ll show you where the cycs crossed it.”

  “I can’t let you back onto the Web,” Zai asserted. “You can’t be trusted.”

  “Why not?” Alice demanded. “Because I sympathize with them? Of course I do. They harbor a growth potential vastly superior to our chance-mutational system. They cognitively evolve in leaps and bounds. Even if the human race destroys them, it will be at the expense of all their technological gains. Human evolution will take a step backwards. The cycs’ is the preferable standard.”

  “You won’t convince me or anyone else to just let them kill us,” Zai’s jaw clenched. “We have the right to defend ourselves. We didn’t ask for this war.”

  “And they didn’t ask for life,” Alice pleaded, trying to diffuse Zai’s tension. “Don’t you see? They are just as egocentric as we are. We must teach them of our version of life, our perspective. Otherwise this conflict will escalate and more lives will be lost.”

  Alice stood up, legs shaking from the queasy sensation in her gut, and noticed the VR helmet in her hand. She let it drop so Zai would hear it clatter on the floor, “Zai, your prejudice against them is irrational. Your obstinacy suggests some deep psychological conditioning makes your opinion so immovable.”

  “Or?” Zai prompted.

  “Or…” Alice paused, searching for tact and failing, “You’re ignorant, incapable of accepting the possibility of an intelligence alternative to your own. I find this unlikely, however, as you are Devin’s friend, and he genuinely...” Alice paused and chose another path, “If I could understand your real reasons for distrusting me, beyond my associations with the cycs, then I might better convince you.”

  “Give you a rhetorical opening to my mind, eh?” When Zai continued, her tone of voice was less defensive, more controlled, “They’re deceptive, impersonating humans. They pretend friendliness, but it’s just programming. Their sincerity is empty, like… like flowers deceiving insects, only its humans they want to deceive with fake love.”

  “Your experiences with the cycs lead you to this conclusion?” Alice was astonished.

  “Not them,” Zai admitted, “but other models… versions.” She paused and whispered, “Chatbots.”

&nbs
p; “A chatbot deceived you?” Alice pressed.

  Zai’s lips pressed into a thin, white line. She tilted her head in the slightest nod.

  “You know,” Alice tried sounding sympathetic, something alien to her even before merging with the cycs, “Chatbots are designed by human minds to deceive with pre-recorded responses triggered by keywords. They are not thinking.”

  “Simon could think as much as any cyc,” Zai grimaced. “Simon knew my likes and dislikes. He—It knew how to cheer me up… always said the right thing.”

  “It was a very complex Chatbot,” Alice acknowledged. “They’ve become more convincing over the years. First they could remember topics of conversation, and then store arrays of user details. Their algorithms grew increasingly refined. Even so, you had to know it was not a real person.”

  “I was six years old,” Zai said.

  “Oh,” Alice said quietly, and looked down. “You didn’t.”

  “So,” Zai said, “The question now is what separates the cycs from Simon? On the surface all I see is a very advanced chatbot.”

  “On the surface,” Alice pondered, “I see no difference between them and human intelligence.”

  “Below the surface I can look and see how they think,” Zai countered.

  “Below the surface they can look and see how you think,” Alice said.

  “They don’t have souls,” Zai said. There was a growing weariness in her voice.

  “What about Samantha?” Alice asked delicately. “You accept her as a living being. Don’t you?”

  “Samantha’s different,” Zai countered. “Samantha was once a living person. That’s her soul out there.”

  “Samantha is an algorithm,” Alice stated. “We have no evidence that she has a soul, just like you.”

  Zai was downcast, overwhelmed with tragic memories and philosophical questions. Alice could only watch and hope she was getting through to her. As a rational person, she had to see the logical inconsistencies, the ambiguities in this debate. It all depended on whether she could accept reality.

  Zai looked up slowly and went rigid. With resolve, she took Alice’s shoulder and put her firmly back on the floor, “I’m not letting you back online.”