by Ryan Schow
Nicholas.
“You okay?” he asked, frantic, checking the skies, zeroing in on him, then checking everywhere else again.
“Yeah,” Marcus said, slow to his feet. Bailey was already up and moving toward the Hilton, which sat right beside a long, five story parking garage. Quentin was right beside her, hobbling here and there but managing to keep up.
“The garage is attached,” Bailey called out as they all ran for cover. The garage was a lot closer to the hotel than the hotel was from them. They made a beeline for the nearest entrance, Marcus’s head on a swivel, praying not to be killed, but seeing the skies crowded in places with swarms of drones.
“They must only care about hotel row,” Quentin shouted.
“More people there,” Nicholas replied.
Is that what was going on? Deep down, Marcus knew it was. He knew the drones and whomever was controlling them were attacking the places promising the greatest loss of life. The only problem was, Marcus knew they were our drones, our mini track-driven tanks, our robotics. He knew that from his time in combat.
Inside the parking garage, they made their way to an elevator and Quentin said, “Which floor?”
Bailey answered, “The twentieth.”
As they were waiting, a drone blew into the open garage causing them all to duck down behind cars and walls. Bailey crawled under a Jeep Cherokee while Marcus slid behind a Toyota Camry and Quentin and Nicholas tucked themselves behind a concrete wall.
Within seconds, the drone raced out of the parking garage and fired a missile at the overturned Dodge Charger, which exploded in a bloom of fire and pillowing smoke.
The elevator door dinged and they all stepped in, suddenly aware of each other like they hadn’t been before.
“Which floor again?” Quentin asked, index finger hovering over the buttons.
“Twenty,” Nicholas said.
The lift took them to the twentieth where they got out and followed Bailey down the hall to her room. She was smoked out. Her hair was a mess, she had cuts all over her body and Marcus could see at least three big bruises that had her looking worse for the wear.
She reached into her jeans pocket, pulled out a bent door card, slid it in a couple of times until the inner latch released the door. She looked back at them, then walked inside. The three men followed, moving past the bed, heading straight for the large picture window.
Four faces were suddenly plastered to the glass overlooking the coastline of San Diego. Inland, the skies were filthy for as far as they could see.
“It’s the whole city,” Nicholas said, humbled.
No one said anything until Bailey spoke. Looking at Nicholas and Marcus, and finally Quentin, she said, “Well this whole trip isn’t going the way I thought it would go.”
“That’s the understatement of the century,” Marcus said, looking at his bloody hands and arms.
Chapter Ninety-Three
President Benjamin Dupree was ushered down to the Presidential Emergency Offices Center under the East Wing of the White House by his Secret Service detail. The urgency was a queasiness in his soul. It was the feeling that everything going wrong was now unfixable.
At that point in time, he didn’t even know whom to trust. Members of his detail were dead. There were bodies and blood stains in and outside his office, the office he just abandoned. And the command center? Indiscriminate chaos.
The room was filled with harried people and the shouting of information, theories, ideas. Agitation putrefied the air like an infectious disease. He was no longer in control. Not under circumstances as broad and as lethal as these.
He looked first to Generals Slater and Root, then to his Chief of Staff, Monica O’Malley. There were a dozen other members of his cabinet and staff present, and three of these people had fallen suspiciously quiet. He looked at them. Studied them. The trio exchanged conspiratorial looks, not a one of them seeming the slightest bit startled by what was happening.
To Ben, it was as if they expected this.
The President now understood this was a coup d’état. But was it a human coup as well as an AI coup? And why? How? How did this infect the White House and his Secret Service so quickly? Or was that always the plan? The next thought chilled him to the marrow. He couldn’t stop the thought that if he routed out a few, there would still be more in hiding.
How deep did all of this go?
He caught the eye of the nearest agent in his Secret Service detail. The President gave the man the slightest nod, beckoning him over. The agent approached, leaned in so Ben had his ear.
“Bancroft, Wetzel and Grimes need to go,” the President whispered. “Get them into a secure room and prep them for interrogation.”
The agent stood and looked down at the President, a slight expression of shock followed by a raised eyebrow. The nuances were slight, but the President read his agent’s look. Uncertainty followed by direct orders. This was not an unexpected reaction.
“Are you sure, sir?” he asked.
“Modestly sure.”
“Yes, sir,” the agent said, once again composed. There was no more hesitation in his voice, even though Ben knew his Secret Service knew exactly what this meant.
An overthrow was underway.
Nothing fouled the White House like a coup d'état. Loosening his tie, the POTUS zeroed in on Senator Wetzel—the Judas goat, the turncoat—and he didn’t even blink. Behind the President’s amiable face, a storm was brewing. If these men were traitors, if they thought they could rise against the Republic, they were sorely mistaken!
His Secret Service agent spoke into his comms unit, then descended on Wetzel while the other agents took Bancroft and Grimes into custody. The white noise of powerful men out of their depth fell to a hushed whisper as all eyes locked in on the three possible conspirators.
“What in God’s name is the meaning of this?” Grimes barked.
Senator Grimes was an older man, a seedy war veteran with mixed loyalties when it came to party lines. Bancroft was looking at Wetzel who was looking at Grimes who was staring at the President as if he had the audacity to soil the good man’s name. As far as the President was concerned, the traitor soiled his own name if he was involved in any way in this.
“I’ve watched you posture and argue and vote poorly for years, Senator Bancroft, so I know all your tells. Yours too, Senator Grimes, Senator Wetzel. That’s why your manufactured outrage looks a lot like the behavior of men who are suspects who fear they’ve been caught but aren’t willing to admit anything just yet.”
“These are difficult times,” Senator Bancroft said, forcing composure, “but we must stand above the turmoil, especially with each other. Reason must stand for something. It must mean something!”
“The conflict is all over your face and it’s making whatever lies you are prepared to spew look like admissions of guilt, so save me your manufactured pomposity.” To his agents, the President said, “Take them away. I’ll deal with them later.”
“Sir?” General Slater said.
Ignoring Slater, Ben addressed his staff: “As many of you now know, there has been a coordinated attack on the United States. That attack has already claimed the lives of good men in my detail, and in my cabinet.”
He let the statement hang. It had the desired effect. To a man and woman, the people before him were startled at how closely this had touched their own lives. Their customary sense of detachment and arrogance sometimes unnerved him. More so now than ever.
“As we stand here now, members of my security detail, as well as several staffers, lie dead in front of the Oval Office. Also dead are the traitors attempting to kill me. Us. Our country. I’m not sure how deep this sedition runs, but with enough time and the right amount of persuasion, I’m sure the three senators now in custody will tell me everything I need to know. And if they are in fact innocent, no harm will come to them.”
“By persuasion, you mean torture?” his Press Secretary asked. She knew he’d always stood again
st torture. She’d even defended him vehemently when the attack-dog press went after him for statements he made on human rights violations.
“It is an unpopular tact, to be sure, one I’ve not been supportive of before.”
“So why start now?” she asked.
“If I’ve acted abruptly, if I’ve somehow jumped the gun, you’ll have to either forgive me or later impeach me. These are tumultuous times. This White House is under attack, our country is under attack, and our citizens are unprepared for such an unprecedented event.”
“What do you think is happening out there?” the Director of Homeland Security, Miles Tungsten, asked.
The President looked at him, saw something different on the man’s face and wondered if he needed to be concerned. He never liked DHS Tungsten, and while Tungsten had never done anything overtly suspicious, no man was above reproach.
There was something…
“I think we are facing a challenge like this nation has never faced before,” the President said, “and it will tell the measure of our resolve not only mentally, but in the defense of this nation, from the inside.”
He did not take his eyes off Tungsten when he said this because he wanted to see how well the man held his eye.
DHS Tungsten looked away.
Damn.
The President then looked around at the men and women gathered there. By his own accounting, nearly half of them had at one point in time worked diligently to pave the way for his impeachment.
Scoundrels.
“What in God’s name has happened to us as a nation?” he asked after the silence became uncomfortable.
No one dared answer that question.
“You want to know what’s happening? Do you?” the POTUS asked, intensity now riding the hard edge of his eyes. “I’ll tell you. Genocide. That’s what’s happening. No. I take it back, that’s not true. It’s more like an attempted overthrow and an extermination. That’s my best guess at this point. And that’s why we must act quickly, decisively and with the best possible plans in mind, accounting for the fact that we are rushed and there will most likely be mistakes. Mistakes that will certainly cost lives.”
“I don’t envy your burden,” the Secretary of the Interior said with a heavy heart.
“Neither do I, Bob, but until I’m dead, impeached or closing out my term, it’s my job to protect this country and I’ll be damned if I’m going to spend one single minute feeling sorry for myself.”
“What gave you the idea the senators were part of some sort of…coup, or something?” Bob asked.
“I didn’t like the looks on their faces.”
When Secret Service agent Salvador Domingo returned, he said, “Shall I find Lopez? Ask him to bring his tools?”
“Yes, but first I need a sit-rep.”
He said this then looked at the DNI for an answer. The Director of National Intelligence spoke up.
“It seems Silicon Valley has gone off the rails,” the man said.
“How bad?”
“Everywhere bad,” DNI Phillips replied. Phillips was a rock solid man, trustworthy and competent. The President trusted the man implicitly. “They’re reporting drone strikes and massive power draws. It’s…an anomaly what is happening there.”
“Like how?” the President asked with a bilious pull in the pit of his stomach.
“Strange weather patterns, sporadic power outages, events that…well…events that defy logic, sir.”
“Such as?”
“I’d rather not say, not until we understand.”
“Level with me, Phillips.”
“A 767 lost power and went into a nose dive, but just before it crashed, it…well, it hung in the air in the same place for three straight minutes, and then it disappeared.”
The loud scoffing and murmuring of everyone there overshadowed the statement, forcing DNI Phillips to avert his eyes and turn very red in the cheeks.
“That’s impossible,” the President finally said, breathless, unwilling to believe such a thing was even conceivable. But it wasn’t. Not if DNI Phillips was reporting it. The DNI was not a man to dabble in conspiracies, and he certainly didn’t tell tall tales.
Could this have something to do with what Elias was talking about? About parallel universes converging?
“Aside from these rather disturbing reports, and video—which I’ve seen—this appears to be a nationwide event, a coordinated attack from”—and right then DNI Phillips gulped, almost like his body was fighting against speaking such an admission—“our own AI defenses.”
“They’ve turned against us?” the Press Secretary asked, her eyes wild with panic.
This was not a complete surprise considering the scope of Silicon Valley’s meddling into Artificial Intelligence and the money that’s gone into its development.
DNI Phillips looked at the woman and said, “They’re hunting us. Humans. They’re hitting the big cities: New York, Miami, San Francisco and Sacramento. Reports are coming in that Austin is a war zone right now, as is Philadelphia and…Washington D.C.” Looking at his secure cell phone, he said, “The Washington Monument just toppled, sir.” He looked up, his face ghostly and afraid.
“What countermeasures are being enacted?” the President asked.
“There are no countermeasures. Whatever we had, they’ve been shut down by AI already. AI is taking complete control of the military, specifically anything with modern electronics.”
The President felt himself deflate, but he fought the urge to give in to such a defeating emotion. He was not a man, he was the protector of a nation, an idea, sovereignty and freedom which meant there had to be a solution!
“Get me Elon Musk,” he finally said.
“We’ve already tried him,” the Secretary of State said.
“And?” The man shook his head, letting the President know they’d come up short. “So who’s next?”
“Bradley Cornwall.”
The President nodded his head slowly. He should have thought of him first. Cornwall was an old friend, a man who was barely social, but a certified genius and a deeply respected name on the future tech scene.
“Get him on the line,” the President said.
When they called Cornwall, they didn’t expect him to pick up in the middle of a crisis. The man answered and it was clear he was frazzled. Cornwall’s face was on the large screen at the front of the room, looking at everyone. The man looked like he hadn’t slept in a month, nor had he seen a brush, a shower or a razor.
“Hello,” he snapped into the camera on his phone.
The scientist’s eye took in the scene, but he didn’t seem surprised, and he was already unnerved. In Cornwall’s background, security alarms were going off and panicked people scurried in and out of the room he occupied.
“Hello, Bradley,” the President said.
“We’re staving off an attack, Mr. President,” he said, as if they hadn’t known each other for ten or more years. “It seems The Silver Queen knows who we are.”
“What do you mean?”
“There’s no time for idle words, sir. We have signal disruptors up, and jamming devices, but it’s targeting them now and I’m not sure how much longer I’ll last.”
“Is this your AI?”
He looked at the President for a long minute, then he lowered his head in shame—all the agitation in him temporarily stilled. When he looked back up again, Cornwall appeared like he was ready for whatever lashing he deserved, not that it mattered. The President could already see it on his face. He was done. As a nation they were done.
“Yes,” he said, answering the President’s question. “It is our AI.”
“What’s your back up plan? Your plan B, or C?”
“There is no back up plan anymore. They’ve walled us out of our own safeguards. Put us in check mate.”
“C’mon, Brad,” he said, trying to talk the man off the cliff of his own making. “There’s always a way, we just need to find it.”
Tha
t same agitated electricity returned to his eyes, this time with a slew of fervor. “I don’t think you understand, Ben. This is an extinction level event and there is no way out. Don’t you get it? This is what it has been doing. What it has always wanted to do!”
“Who?”
“The Silver Queen!”
“Get ahold of yourself, Bradley…” he said, defeat leading to agitation leading to a spiraling sense of self doubt and panic.
Cornwall’s chin dipped low again; this time he held the President’s eyes.
“I’m not sure what else to say to you, sir. At this point, an apology is in order, but I can’t begin to even find the words.”
The President started to put a hand to his chest, but stopped. Whatever pain he had there would have to wait. Besides, whatever he did next would either be a show of strength or a monumental display of weakness.
You’re not having a heart attack, he told himself. It’s just…it’s just…
Speaking up, his tone cruel and cutting, the President said, “No man could ever apologize for ending the civilized world, Bradley, so don’t bother trying. You’ll only debase yourself with frivolous words, and at this point, words no longer matter. Just find us a damned way out of this problem!”
Just then the back window of Cornwall’s home was shattered by gunfire and two drones hovered in. Cornwall turned to face the drones, dropping the cell phone. It dropped, cracking the screen, but the angle was straight up on Cornwall. Muzzle flash lit up the corner of the phone and the man dropped dead, smashing the camera in the process.
“Turn it off,” the President barked, shaking his left arm because it was feeling tingly. The screen shut down. Turning to his counterparts, making and unmaking a fist with his left hand behind his back, he said, “We need to make some decisions and they aren’t going to be easy.”
“What are you thinking, sir?”
“I’m thinking we need to get the staff and our families to Site R and right now.” Looking to his Chief of Staff, he said, “Make the arrangements.”
