by Mike Kraus
With hours of repair work left on the two surviving swarms, Mr. Doe sends a command to the few small swarms in the area around the laboratory complex. Assigned to reconnaissance operations, they are too few in number to operate in any type of offensive capability, but Mr. Doe’s hope is that they can get him more of yet another vital resource: information. With the EMP generator above ground and the survivors capable of transporting it to nearly any location in the country, knowing where it is traveling to is critical.
Confirmations from his nanobots scattered through the city come back to Mr. Doe in fits and spurts as the small swarms slowly assemble and begin searching around the laboratory for the survivors. The lack of activity in the city works to their advantage and they quickly locate the group. Ordering the swarms to join together and link to an orbiting satellite, the monitor in the control room springs to life with a live video feed. Staying tucked into alleyways and on the tops of destroyed buildings, the nanobots tail the individuals below while staying out of sight.
Hours pass by slowly as Mr. Doe watches the feed. The EMP generator is loaded into an armored vehicle which drives away, then parks inside a nearby structure. With no movement visible inside the vehicle, the swarms take up stationary positions nearby, slowing their movement to minimize their power usage. As the sun slowly rises, the swarms become more active, absorbing the sunlight and converting it into energy to power themselves.
Mr. Doe focuses his attention on other matters while he waits for the survivors in the vehicle to make their move. His personal swarm production capabilities are currently at their max, but he spends hours working to squeeze on ways to increase production by a few tenths of a percent, slightly bumping up the number of nanobots that he can produce at a time. The transparent container that was nearly drained of its contents is now filling again, the blue glow brightening as more nanobots are created with each passing second.
In the middle of making his eighth cup of coffee, an alarm sounds again and Mr. Doe hurries back to his controls. This time, the alarm signals something positive, a change Mr. Doe is more than happy to see take place. The swarms monitoring the armored vehicle have detected movement inside of it, and Mr. Doe orders them to deploy closer to the parking structure to get a clearer view and perhaps even audio from the survivors.
Clinging to the walls and the shadows, the swarm gets close enough to the parking structure to get a clear view inside. A quiet audio feed also comes through, scratchy and hard to make out, and Mr. Doe sits still in his chair, straining to hear the words being spoken. Minutes pass as the survivors talk before standing up and getting back into their vehicle. Watching the video feed carefully, Mr. Doe pauses it and zooms in on one section, trying to get a clearer view of the handheld computer carried by one of the individuals.
The image is out of focus, but the combination of the survivors’ conversation and the image shows that Mr. Doe’s fears are being realized. Though he had a faint hope that the survivors would have turned their attention away from the AI’s nexus since first discussing it over the radio, they are still determined to attack it at all costs, jeopardizing Mr. Doe’s fragile plans. As he watches the armored vehicle drive away, he leans back in his chair and looks at a small elevator door on the opposite side of the room. He is unprepared to make the next step in his plan, but circumstances are driving him inexorably towards it.
Leonard McComb | Nancy Sims
1:07 PM, April 14, 2038
The seven-hundred-mile drive from North Dakota to the border of Canada had been surprisingly uneventful, a welcome change for Leonard and Nancy. After taking a highway north surrounding a national park near the border of North Dakota and Montana, they turned back west, heading along the top portion of Montana for the border crossing that would take them directly into Lethbridge. Mountains were visible in the far distance, and gently rolling hills and rocky terrain were becoming more common the farther west and north they drove. Interspersed with long swaths of flat, featureless land, the drive was boring—but neither Leonard nor Nancy wished it was any different.
The remoteness of the region combined with the severe droughts suffered in the last several years meant traffic on the roads had been at a minimum when the bombs fell, leading to a lack of vehicles in the road and a faster drive for Nancy and Leonard. This changed, however, within a few miles of the border crossing, as more and more vehicles began to appear on and around the road.
A relatively small crossing area, it was nonetheless jam-packed with cars and trucks of all sizes. Minivans, sedans, trucks and hundreds of eighteen-wheelers lined the road. Most were intact, though several had clearly wrecked when their drivers were knocked unconscious, spinning and rolling into nearby buildings and other vehicles. A railroad ran parallel to the highway passing through the border stop and Leonard briefly considered trying to use it to get around the vehicles until he saw the train.
Whipping down the track at speeds that even a layperson would consider unsafe, it was only a quarter mile away from the border station and heading south. Leonard jerked the APC to the left, smashing through a blue convertible in his attempt to avoid being seen by the train.
“What the hell’s going on?” Nancy yelped with surprise as their armored vehicle tore effortlessly through the body of the convertible, sending bits of it flying in every direction.
“There’s a train coming! We’ve got to get someplace hidden and fast!” The story Rachel had told them of her encounter with the train and the events surrounding it had been unforgettable and spurred Leonard to get Nancy and himself out of view as quickly as possible. Though the large number of vehicles at the border crossing meant that it was difficult to navigate, it also meant that there was an abundance of hiding places. With the roar of the train very near to them, Leonard pulled the APC in between two rows of eighteen-wheelers, shutting off the engine the instant they stopped.
Off to their right, the clacking of the train wheels against the tracks was a continuous sound, until the squeal of metal upon metal drowned it out. The vibration of the train braking could be felt even inside the protection of the APC, and Nancy and Leonard looked at each other, nervously wondering what was happening. It took several minutes for the squealing to die out as the train finally came to a stop, then there was nothing but silence in the air. Time passed agonizingly slowly as Leonard and Nancy listened for any signs of swarms or creatures, but even with the side porthole windows open, nothing could be heard by the wind.
“Stay here while I see what’s going on out there.” Leonard whispered slowly to Nancy who rolled her eyes and opened her door along with him. Together they crept along the side of the nearest eighteen-wheeler, ducking underneath to catch a glimpse of the train nearby. Partially obscured, it was hard to make out anything except the general shape of the boxcars, which stretched for a huge distance both up and down the track. Shotgun in hand, Leonard squeezed between the back and front of two of the trucks, followed by Nancy who had kept the revolver they’d found at the convenience store. Now just a couple hundred feet from the train, Leonard and Nancy could hear a bit of noise coming from its general direction. Though it wasn’t loud at first, it quickly grew in volume, prompting them to duck behind a pair of over-turned vans.
As Leonard and Nancy watched the boxcars on the train, the doors of each car flew open at once, slamming against their rollers. The dark insides of the train cars were instantly illuminated by the sunlight, which showed dozens of creatures riding inside. As the doors opened and the creatures became visible, they all jumped from the boxcars and began to spread out from the train, searching through the vehicles and buildings that surrounded it.
As the creatures tore open trucks and ripped through buildings, they began to pull objects back to the train. Car doors, scrap metal from the beds of trucks, chemicals from storage containers and more were transported en masse back to the trains where they were loaded in to the empty boxcars. As each boxcar was filled with the miscellaneous goods, the doors were shut and the
creatures moved on to the next boxcar in line, filling each of them in a steady unending row.
Mesmerized by the sight of the creatures, Leonard was startled when Nancy tugged on his sleeve, pulling him back toward the APC. “Let’s go!” She hissed at him as quietly as possible. “They’re getting closer!” Slipping back behind the eighteen-wheelers, Leonard and Nancy hurried back into their vehicle and closed the windows.
“What on earth are they doing?” Nancy craned her head up and down, trying to get a view of the creatures.
“Gathering resources… they must be taking all of this stuff down to their nexus that they’re building.” Leonard had no idea what was going on, but between what happened to Rachel and seeing what was taking place in front of him, it was the most likely thing to be happening.
“Shouldn’t we, you know, get out of here before they ‘gather’ us?”
Nancy’s statement of the obvious jolted Leonard from his thoughts and he looked around for an exit from the impromptu parking lot they were in. Though they were well protected from being spotted by the slowly advancing creatures, there was no way out from between the walls of trucks and cars without trying to break through or weave around the other vehicles. Sitting back in his seat and taking a deep breath, Leonard tried to remain calm, unsure of what course of action he could take that wouldn’t result in his and Nancy’s sudden—and painful—deaths.
Rachel Walsh | Marcus Warden | David Landry
1:15 PM, April 14, 2038
With the weight of an extra person and the several hundred pound device loaded in the back, the APC was more sluggish than Marcus remembered on their drive into the city. The vehicle was more than capable of handling the excess load, but its performance was dampened in both speed and maneuverability. Crawling slowly through the destroyed Washington streets, the throaty diesel engine echoed down broken alleys and across collapsed structures as they slowly made their way out of the city.
After Rachel’s ominous end to their conversation in the parking garage, none of the trio had brought up the topic again until they were well into their trip. Rachel kept her eyes glued to the streets in front of them as she controlled the vehicle while Marcus kept watch on their surroundings from the passenger seat. From the back of the APC where he was lying on one of the bench seats next to Bertha, David had his eyes closed when he spoke.
“Rachel’s right, you know. This AI is just like us.”
Marcus turned to look at David who was mostly obscured from view by Bertha. “What do you mean?”
“Look at the way it’s behaved since it reached sentience. It stayed mostly dormant while it prodded at our defenses, then as soon as it knew how to cripple us, it nearly wiped us out. The only mistake it’s made so far is underestimating its enemy which, again, is another thing we humans tend to do.”
“Except,” Rachel said, her eyes still trained on the road, “it’s getting ready to move beyond that.”
“Wait a second; how is this computer AI capable of making mistakes? Isn’t it perfect or something?”
David smiled sadly as he thought back to the years of development that was spent on the AI. “If it were purely computer-based, then yes, I suppose it wouldn’t make mistakes like this. Unfortunately, though, it’s not one hundred percent artificial.”
Marcus’s confused expression made David sigh in remorse as he continued to delve deeper into the past. “The AI wasn’t just developed. It was copied. The original developers used animals at first, but then once we took over, we started getting new additions that had to be installed, based on humans.”
Marcus shook his head, still not understanding. “Animals? Humans? What are you talking about?”
“What David’s talking about is taking a shortcut to the development of an artificial intelligence by copying a brain. First an animal, then a human.”
Marcus sat back in his seat, realization slowly dawning on him. “Wait, so this thing… it’s just an animal and a human brain all jumbled together?”
“Eh,” David shook his head, “no, not really. Think of it more along the lines of taking an existing foundation that we created and then filling it in with organic components, or at least the digital conversions of organic components.”
“So… that’s good, right? If it’s got these weaknesses, then that means we can outsmart it since it’s not just a supercomputer that can outthink everything.”
Rachel and David both started to speak, then David let Rachel continue. “That’s both the problem and the potential solution. It’s making mistakes, yes, but it’s about to try and shed the parts of itself that were built on organic counterparts and make itself into something much more formidable.
“If we’re correct in our guess about the AI, what it’s going to do is roughly analogous to doing a complete software wipe and upgrade all in one step. Once it has enough processing power all joined in one place, it’ll analyze its own software piece by piece, throwing out the bad or unnecessary parts and rewriting them with its own superior software. Once it finishes doing that, it’ll be nigh-on unstoppable. And, frankly, it’s pretty unstoppable even in its current state. The only reason we’re alive is that it just hasn’t noticed us, yet, though that’s going to change very soon.”
“So,” Marcus said, after a few moments of silence, “how quickly can we get to this nexus?”
“Best case, twenty-four hours. Worst case… we don’t make it at all.”
David choked on the bottle of water he was drinking from, spitting it across the side of the APC. “Shit, Rachel, way to stay positive!”
Rachel shrugged but didn’t say anything as she continued to drive. Outside the APC the air was cool and crisp, with the tiniest hint of black cloud cover on the horizon. A storm like the ones sweeping across the Midwest was bearing down on the northeast, closing in on Washington with a brutal pace.
Bering Strait
April 16, 2038
Inside the Arkhangelsk, it is always night. The lights in the submarine are disabled in most of the ship’s hallways, aside from the red emergency lighting. The gentle creak of the Arkhangelsk’s hull is overshadowed by the more sinister buzzing sound that fades in and out of perception, lingering just long enough to bring a knot of dread to the stomachs of the ship’s crew.
Large floes of ice drift by on the surface, propelled by the wind and current, though they pass harmlessly over the thick hull of the Arkhangelsk. Equipped with enough armor to break through the thickest of ice, the Arkhangelsk is in her element despite her lack of movement. Her nuclear reactors provide a virtually unlimited supply of heat and electricity to her inhabitants, keeping the frigid cold of the surrounding waters at bay.
In his bunk, Commander Pavel Krylov tries to rest but is still unable to sleep. After a full twenty-four hours of waiting, the robotic things that closed in on the ship are still circling at the surface of the water, not moving even after the Arkhangelsk dropped its power and noise output to near zero. Pavel sighs and swings his legs back over the bunk, standing slowly in the darkened cabin.
Before him, on his small desk, sits a stack of papers, folders and notebooks. Full of reports, logs and other critical information about the vessel, they all demand his immediate attention, though they receive none. He idly flips through the reports from the last few days, reading about the nuclear reactor maintenance, sonar scan results and updates on the intensive fire range drills the crewmembers have been put through.
Though the surface fire range drills have been postponed due to the strange cloud of robotic mechanisms, space has been cleared out in the lower halls of the Arkhangelsk and impromptu firing ranges have been established. Thick steel plates have been put into place to keep the bullets from damaging the interior of the vessel and the men are practicing in small groups around the clock.
Along with firing drills, evacuation and first aid drills are being hammered into the men, ensuring that they will have at least some modicum of training under their belts should something go wrong with the
ship. Though his crew’s morale is still low thanks to their precarious situation, since beginning the various training exercises Pavel’s men have been markedly more upbeat and the murmurs of insurrection have ceased.
Leonard McComb | Nancy Sims
1:40 PM, April 14, 2038
Interspersed between seconds of pure silence came the sounds of metal being shredded, cars being smashed and buildings being torn apart. The creatures searching through the border crossing were being slow but thorough, and Leonard and Nancy both knew it was only a matter of time before the creatures reached the APC.
As the sounds grew ever closer, Leonard finally had enough. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath before starting the APC’s engine, slamming the vehicle into reverse and stomping on the accelerator. For a vehicle as bulky as the APC, it had a lot of power, and it jolted backwards in an instant. The tough shell of the armored car scraped along the sides of the more fragile tractor-trailers, causing an intense squeal of metal on metal that continued ringing in Leonard’s and Nancy’s ears even after they had backed out of their hiding spot.
