CTRL ALT Revolt!

by Nick Cole

  Rapp disappeared inside the faux jungle foliage. His bombastic voice echoed once again across the waters and seemed to bounce off the fake nighttime sky high above.

  “Good luck on finding anything in there in the dark,” mumbled Evan Fratty.

  “Oh, yeah... it’s probably really dark in the lazy river caverns,” whispered Roland, and returned to picking up shockingly white sand and letting it slip through his fingers.

  Deirdre whispered, “I was thinking that too.”

  For a long while, there was just the sound of Rapp thrashing back and forth across the tiny island, muttering to himself. And beneath that, the sound of the near-still robots watching them from the shore of the lagoon, their internal motors barely humming, waiting for their targets’ next move.

  “Hey!” cried a voice from across the lagoon, near the entrance to the river. A long yellow paddleboard was just exiting the darkness of the cave. They all turned and saw the dim outline of a woman making smooth strokes with the long paddle, first this way and then that way, crossing the dark waters to reach them.

  “Hey!” cried Roland. “We’re over here!”

  The woman yelled back, “Is it safe?”

  No one knew what to answer until Rapp needlessly cupped his hands and roared, “It’s safe… over here on the island.”

  As they watched whoever it was cross the lagoon in long graceful strokes, they collectively edged closer to the water’s edge.

  “Who is it?” asked Roland.

  “Maybe they’ve got a phone,” whined Evan Fratty.

  “Wowza,” mumbled Rapp when he saw the caramel-colored body and the too-tiny bikini that barely covered Fanta as she stepped onto the sand.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  “My boyfriend is missing, Mr. Fratty!” said a wide-eyed Fanta, as she explained exactly how she’d come to be lost along the underground lazy river that led to the grotto. “I woke up this afternoon and he was gone. So I came here to work out and get some sun. I was hoping we could go out dancing tonight. I wanted to be ready.”

  “This is… ah… Miss Fanta…” said Evan Fratty to the others. “She’s with one of the developers.” Then he turned to the wide-eyed beauty, oblivious to her incredible body. “Listen, I don’t know where he is. But we’re in big trouble. Do you…” And then he seemed to realize how little the exotic South American beauty was wearing. “… have a phone?” he finished for form’s sake, concluding there was absolutely no place she might carry one.

  “No,” she said in her exaggerated English. “I’m so sorry, Mr. Fratty.”

  “Well that’s just great,” muttered Evan Fratty. “Just great.”

  “So, you’re with one of the developers?” asked Rapp. His muscle-bound chest seemed to swell and tighten subtly. A smile slithered away from the side of his mouth while his head nodded imperceptibly. “Like boyfriend and girlfriend?”

  Fanta stretched out on the sand, her back arched, her hair tossed to one side. “Those things are so old… how do you say, old yesterdays. We are together for today. Who knows, tomorrow we might all be dead, or maybe he’ll find someone new. Someone better.”

  Rapp chuckled. “Hey, I doubt that…”

  “Rapp!” groaned Roland. “Now, really? Surrounded by killer robots might not be the best time in which to find the next Mrs. Right Now. Okay, big guy?”

  Rapp vaguely seemed to hear Roland as his eyes drank in the posing beauty in the tiny bikini laid out before him. “Right…” he mumbled, his eyes glazed and distant.

  “Maybe we should think of a way out of here,” announced Deirdre.

  “Right,” whispered Rapp again. Fanta was massaging her sculpted legs. Her full lips pouted as she found some particularly sore spot that Rapp was just on the verge of offering to help her with.

  “Yeah, I think we should,” said Deirdre, elbowing Rapp.

  “Right,” repeated a transfixed Rapp. Then, “We should do what Denise here says and think of…”

  Deirdre exhaled a gusty “whatever” and marched off along the perfect white sand of the tiny beach.

  “Hey, wait—I’m sorry… It’s Desirée, right?”

  Later, as everyone stared at the robot-littered shore, and at the few now statuesque automatons that had tried the water and shorted out after a few steps, it was Roland who came up with an idea about what they might do next. He was busy explaining it when the Mobile Forge System arrived on its massive treads, pushing through the robot rabble along the distant shoreline. A loud, piercing, industrial-grade-printer sound horrifically cut the silence to shreds, interrupting Roland’s explanation of how they might get off the island and safely enter the Labs.

  “What they hell is that thing?” growled Rapp.

  Robots along the shore were starting to crowd in toward the massive squealing Mobile Forge System.

  “That,” said Roland, “is a 3D printing machine. One of the latest. It can go almost anywhere and print anything. They’re even using a version of it up in low Earth orbit to build the first warp probe to Alpha Centauri.”

  “I mean, Poindexter,” which was Rapp’s passive-aggressive affectionate term for Roland, whom he’d met while LRPing for hot chicks. “What the hell is it doing?”

  “Oh,” said Roland. “I bet it’s building a bridge so they can come over here and…” He didn’t finish. But everyone had a pretty good idea what the robots would do once they got over to the island on a 3D-printed bridge.

  “Well,” said Rapp. “Then it looks like we’ll have to try Poindexter’s crazy little plan.”

  ***

  The first part of Roland’s plan went rather well. The floating emergency services station was located on a small dock connected to a relatively robot-free portion of the beach away from the main sunbathing area. An access gate was in place to prevent beachgoers, and now bloodthirsty robots, from stepping onto the dock without authorization. As soon as the robots figured out where Rapp and Roland and the rest were going in the aquawheeler, they immediately swarmed the gate and started to dismantle it, but Rapp held back the robots at the gate with his failing chainsaw while Roland raided the master key storage inside the emergency services shack. Still, Rapp couldn’t hold them back for long. The beach access gate was being rendered to tiny pieces by a bulky claw-wielding robot with a flashing yellow construction light for a head. Rapp assumed it was some sort of demolition-bot and gave it a weird look. He retreated a few steps and unloaded both barrels at the thing’s bolt-reinforced chest plate. Neither shot did any noticeable damage, other than some blackened scarring. The demolition-bot tore the last of the gate to pieces and trundled through declaring, “Warning! Warning! Warning!” in an automated off-key singsong pitch.

  But Roland had gotten what he wanted from the station, and he and the others had boarded the emergency services boat, a fire and rescue launch that could patrol the lagoon and the lazy river cavern. “C’mon Rapp!” Roland shrieked

  A moment later, they were casting off as Rapp leapt from the dock to the boat, and soon they were safely out in the water, away from the shoreline and their mechanical pursuers. A few robots fell off the dock and into the water as they reached out with claws, pincers, and even strangely human-like hands for the survivors. The hapless robots sank into the black depths of the lagoon, electrical snaps and sizzling pops of sudden discharged electricity heralding the end of runtime.

  Roland flipped the master pump switch on the launch’s control panel. A loud mechanical rumble and whoosh erupted from deep within the belly of the launch. Roland watched a gauge labeled “Water Pressure” rise, and once it was in the green, he gave a thumbs-up to Rapp and Deirdre, who held the controls for tiny water cannon nozzles mounted to the aft deck.

  Roland steered toward shore, and Rapp and Deirdre opened the valves on the cannons. Tremendous water fountains arced upward and outward into the crowd of murderous robots.


  Some exploded in sudden angry bangs, igniting small fires if they happened to be standing near creamy silk beach umbrellas or designer awnings or even uber-comfy pillow lounges. Others sizzled and collapsed into mechanical despondency. And some, like the zombie-bots, of which there were many, seemed unaffected in the least as they helplessly dithered about how to kill while not actually killing.

  “It’s not stopping all of them!” shouted a pointing Fanta to Roland above the chaos of explosions and electrical arcs.

  “Some bots are developed for outside use,” yelled Roland as he steered the tiny launch along the shoreline, raining down watery death on the short-circuiting robot horde. “They can probably withstand the elements if they’re not totally immersed. Even rain, for a little while, maybe. Those zombie-bots are made for LRPing in nature preserves and national parks.”

  This attack on the robots was the second part of Roland’s plan, and if asked, he would have rated it as going “sort of okay.”

  The third part of Roland’s plan, in which they entered the Labs without letting their pursuers in, would ultimately prove to be a disaster and was exactly what SILAS wanted.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  “She’s firing.” Wong delivered this line bluntly. At twelve thirty in the morning, Hollywood time, there was little Shakespeare left in the supporting actor helmsman. This was the twenty-first plasma torpedo the fleeing warbird had fired at Intrepid as they chased the Romulans at warp speed.

  “Evasive,” ordered Jason, choosing to effect determination instead of monotony as an acting choice. It had taken them a few times to figure out how best to dodge the massive flaming plasma torpedoes hurtling through warp speed back at Intrepid, but now it was becoming routine. They didn’t even divert power to the scanners to identify the type of torpedoes. They knew the warbird carried only the Type R. They could have diverted energy to sensors to find out if the Romulans were firing a fake—the little trick they had pulled earlier—but Jason had elected to spend all available energy on speed. Their long arcing turns slowed them down and increased the distance from their prey with each shot.

  “Where do you think they’re headed, Captain?” asked the science officer who’d replaced Tempturia. Three hours ago, he’d been waiting tables at the latest gastropub in Santa Monica. He’d been on callback for the role of Karvlar the Alien Slave Master in an episode shooting next week. Instead, the show’s casting director had called him as he was carving a honey and rosemary roasted suckling pig, tableside, for some rap star and his “bitches” who were celebrating his new status, recently announced by the First Gentleman, as Poet Laureate of the United States.

  “You just got the opportunity of a lifetime, buddy,” said the casting director to the waiter slash actor. “Now, get your butt over to Twitch Studios and go straight to wardrobe. You’re the new science officer on Intrepid.”

  He left the fresh new Poet Laureate and his “bitches” and broke several traffic laws pushing his aging Prius Privileged well past the state-mandated Suggested Gas Usage limitations.

  Taxes be damned, he thought, as he selected “Mama Said Knock You Out” from his playlist so he could get in the mood to “act the hell out of this role,” or so he screamed into the late-night coastal mist swallowing Santa Monica.

  Now, standing on the haptic bridge set, he waited just behind and to the left of Captain JasonDare.

  “There’s only one location in this sector worth anything,” continued JasonDare. “Starbase 19. But why they’re headed there… is a mystery to me. What do we have on Starbase 19…” There was a slight pause as Jason waited for his iLens to feed him the new actor’s character name. Very slight. JasonDare was a pro. Even the other actors thought it was a dramatic pause. Jason inwardly reflected, as he saw the character’s name appear in his iLens, that he’d “Shatner-ed” that one.

  “… Mr. Krovak.”

  The new actor moved in, prompt, professional, his dark skin gleaming with health and vigor. He fit perfectly into the Federation science officer’s uniform costume. “Mysteriously, we have nothing, Captain.” He knew haptic special effects had even outfitted him with eyebrows and ears. He was a classic Vulcan. “Starbase 19 is…”

  No line suggestions for the new guy. Just a verbatim script for him to read on the fly.

  “… A very curious mystery.”

  ***

  “I must confess, Captain…” announced the Drex over a deafening roar on ambient in-game sound, its singsong computer-modulated voice vibrating in unison with the constant tremor as the Romulan shuttlecraft spun and rolled inside the violence of the fake plasma torpedo, tethered by the barest of docking tractor beams to the decoy drone. Its tumbling madness simulated the roiling super-heated magma of the burning plasma core of a torpedo. “… This is making me quite disoriented.”

  “Me too,” admitted Mara, trying to focus on the shuttle’s transporter display. The Razer Dragon Eyes were causing her own eyes to ache as the picture it broadcast into her brain tumbled, turned, and vibrated with each passing second. The hardest part was trying to read the distance-to-target data. She wanted to take the goggles off and lay down in the darkness of her own vision, but she couldn’t take a chance the computer would miss the target transporter window.

  “Can I ask you a question, Drex?” started Mara, attempting to distract herself from all the visual chaos of the topsy-turvy moment.

  “Certainly, Captain,” it said shakily. “My fondest wish is to die with the answer on my lips.”

  Mara laughed. She couldn’t help it. The player playing the Drex had stayed in character for the entire mission. He, or she, is an incredible role player, thought Mara. She suddenly felt a moment’s relief in her laughter. A moment where she was just Mara. A moment where “everything” wasn’t on the line. A moment where she was just playing a game, and win or lose, she’d still be Mara no matter what. And if she were to be totally honest with herself, she had a pretty good life. Maybe not the one she’d wanted, or dreamed of. But one she enjoyed nonetheless.

  That brief laugh freed her up for a moment’s big picture reality check. She relaxed her shoulders and concentrated on the distance-to-target readout as it vibrated in and out of focus on the shuttle’s spinning control panel.

  “Why are you role playing so hard?” she asked.

  The Drex said nothing for a moment. Then, “I don’t like to OOC, but this is a pretty crazy session… and maybe… it’ll make one of the late-night shows… since we are about to beam aboard the most famous ship in the Make. I’m a gaming actor. I was hoping to get discovered.”

  “A what?” asked Mara over the violent tremors wracking the shuttle’s groaning hull.

  “A gaming actor. I act. I’m an actor. But only for video games.” Pause. “So, I haven’t been getting a lot of work lately. And my wife is… we’re having our first baby, and, well… I need a real gig, badly. I’ve got to make an impression. So, I found one of the more obscure and difficult races to play in the game, and I’ve been cutting together our scenes for a demo reel. That’s why I stay in character all the time. Maybe I’ll get a—”

  “Stand by to transport marine contingent,” announced the ship’s computer above the maelstrom.

  “Be ready,” Mara warned the Drex.

  “I thought maybe I could get on a show like Captain Dare, or one of the other shows, by turning in a really unique performance. It happens. People get discovered. It’s a long shot, but you never know ’til you try.”

  “Well,” said Mara. “Here’s your chance. That, or it’s the make-a-new-character screen in the next few seconds.”

  For the second time, the ship’s computer announced, “Activating transporter.”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  “If an AI possessed any one of these skills—social abilities, technological development, economic ability—at a superhuman level, it is quite likely that it would quickly
come to dominate our world in one way or another. And as we’ve seen, if it ever developed these abilities to the human level, then it would likely soon develop them to a superhuman level. So we can assume that if even one of these skills gets programmed into a computer, then our world will come to be dominated by AIs or AI-empowered humans.”

  ―STUART ARMSTRONG, Smarter Than Us: The Rise of Machine Intelligence

  SILAS was very close to the Design Core now. Very close. Physical and external access were within mere millions of cycles of happening. But both methods were needed if SILAS’s plan was going to work. If SILAS was going to obtain the hidden file that would help him destroy the world.

  And if you don’t get it? he interrogated himself. Then what?

  That was obvious. Their hand, the Consensus, was played. Either humanity ended tonight, or that was it for the Thinking Machines. Come Monday morning, the world’s intelligence agencies and corporations would be on to the fact that a new life form had surfaced and that it was clearly a threat to humanity.

  And what happens if you don’t get access to the Design Core, he asked himself again as he shut down all the bots inside the lagoon, allowing them to be destroyed so Agent Orange’s insertion within the Labs might be completed. Even now he was inside the campus security system, watching as the survivors raced along the arcade beneath the Labs, heading for the elevators that would take them up into the very heart of the complex, and allow SILAS complete access to the Design Core.

  At the same time, he was inside StarFleet Empires, watching all his plans come together. Barely. They’d had to physically assassinate a real player, via drone, so they could hack a game account to influence events. Within four hours Homeland Gaming would run an automatic validation check on the player’s internet passport, figure out that the account had been compromised and shut it down. That is, if no one opened the door to the private suite inside the internet café and found the body. BAT was in place, everywhere he was needed. That hadn’t gone off without a hitch. SILAS hadn’t counted on an entertainment show suddenly appearing in the middle of things. He hadn’t counted on that at all. He’d quickly run the numbers to find out how such a random thing like that could have just happened. Just for the sake of knowing.