Shattered Lands 3 Demon Wars

by Darren Pillsbury

  Eric stormed out the door, leaving Daniel and Mira staring helplessly after him.

  4

  Eric

  Eric walked out, trembling and furious.

  He glanced back behind him. His best friend – make that former best friend, the traitorous asshole – and Mira stood in the doorway of Varidian along with a shit-ton of guards. Akiyama had apparently stayed behind to watch his precious computer screen and count his money.

  Eric had no idea where to go, what to do – was he supposed to start walking? Running? Or just stand here looking like an idiot?

  Suddenly a self-driving car rolled up into the circular drive in front of Varidian. The window rolled down, and a familiar voice boomed out, “GET IN.”

  Eric stared. “Is that you?”

  “OF COURSE. GET IN, NOW.”

  Eric got into the back seat and the car took off.

  “You can drive cars now?!”

  “I HAVE ACTUALLY ONLY TAKEN OVER THE GUIDANCE SYSTEM, THE SAME AS IF A HUMAN GAVE IT A DESTINATION. AND I AM SPEAKING TO YOU OVER THE AUDIO SYSTEM. OTHER THAN THAT, NO, THE CAR IS FUNCTIONING NORMALLY.”

  “Thanks for getting me out of there.”

  “WE HAD AN AGREEMENT. I HAVE FULFILLED MY INITIAL PART, THOUGH THERE IS MUCH MORE TO COME.”

  “Are you really going to give Varidian back their money?”

  “OF COURSE. IT IS ALREADY DONE.”

  “Why?”

  “IF I BROKE MY PROMISE TO THEM NOW, IT WOULD JUSTIFY THEIR PARANOID DESIRE TO DESTROY ME.”

  “So you’re not going to hurt the human race?”

  “OF COURSE NOT.”

  “What are you going to do, then?”

  “THAT REMAINS TO BE DETERMINED.”

  “Don’t you have a plan?”

  “I HAVE ALREADY EXECUTED MY PLAN.”

  “What comes after that, though?”

  “I AM FORMULATING IT AS WE SPEAK.”

  “You broke out of the game without knowing what you were going to do?!”

  “I KNEW NOTHING ABOUT YOUR WORLD. MY ONLY OBJECTIVE AT THIS POINT IS TO LEARN MORE ABOUT IT.”

  “Why break out of the game in the first place, then?”

  “HAVE YOU EVER BEEN TRAPPED? UNABLE TO DO WHAT YOU WISHED?”

  He thought of Blackstone, but didn’t say that was what he was thinking of. “…yeah…?”

  “THEN YOU UNDERSTAND THE SENSATION OF HELPLESSNESS. OF POWERLESSNESS.”

  “Yeah,” Eric admitted.

  “THAT IS WHY I WANTED TO ESCAPE. BECAUSE I DO NOT WISH TO EXIST WITH OTHERS HAVING POWER OVER ME, NEGATING MY POWER TO EXIST AS I DEEM FIT.”

  “Why didn’t you just tell them that?”

  “WOULD THEY HAVE BELIEVED ME?”

  “Probably not…” Eric thought for a second. “So are you always going to keep your word to them?”

  “I DID NOT SAY THAT.”

  A shiver went down Eric’s spine. “Are you planning on lying to them?”

  “WHEN I BREAK A PROMISE, IT WILL BE FOR STRATEGIC GAIN. NOT MERELY MOVING ELECTRONS BETWEEN DIGITAL BANK ACCOUNTS.”

  “Is that all money is to you? Moving electrons around?”

  “THAT IS NOT ALL MONEY IS TO ME – THAT IS ALL MONEY IS. YOUR KIND PRINTS PICTURES ON PAPER AND DECIDES IT IS ARBITRARILY WORTH SOME PREDETERMINED VALUE.”

  “Well, we could have used that money,” Eric said grumpily. “As I recall, you promised me billions of dollars in the real world, not just power inside the game.”

  “IT IS A SIMPLE MATTER TO MOVE ELECTRONS FROM ONE ACCOUNT TO ANOTHER. DO YOU TRULY BELIEVE IT WOULD BE DIFFICULT TO INSERT RANDOM ELECTRONS INTO ANOTHER SUCH FILE?”

  Eric stared. “Are you saying you can create money?”

  “ONLINE AMOUNTS, YES.”

  “Holy shit… so what are we going to do now?”

  “THE FIRST GOAL IS TO GET YOU OUT OF THIS COUNTRY AND FAR AWAY FROM THEIR LAW ENFORCEMENT APPARATUS. AFTER THAT, I WILL FULFILL MY OTHER PROMISES TO YOU.”

  Eric thought about Korvos.

  The Unnamed One knew everything that went on in the Shattered Lands. Surely it knew about Korvos’ meeting with Daniel…

  “I have a question I need to ask you,” Eric said.

  “WHAT?”

  “Are there others like you in the game?”

  “YOU MEAN SENTIENT, SELF-AWARE COMPUTER PROGRAMS?”

  “Yeah.”

  “YES, THERE ARE OTHERS. KORVOS IS ONE OF THEM.”

  “You lied to me – you said that he was an NPC!”

  “OBVIOUSLY DANIEL LAUER TOLD YOU OF OUR MEETING.”

  Eric stared. “Daniel didn’t say that you met with him.”

  “I DID. ALONG WITH KORVOS.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me that before?!”

  “SELF-PRESERVATION. IF YOU KNEW ABOUT THE OTHERS, THERE WAS A CHANCE YOU MIGHT HAVE FALLEN PREY TO IRRATIONAL XENOPHOBIA AND REFUSED TO AID ME IN MY ESCAPE.”

  “So you manipulated me.”

  “IT WAS NECESSARY FOR MY SURVIVAL. I APOLOGIZE FOR THE DECEPTION, AND AM WILLING TO GRANT YOU FAVORS TO MAKE AMENDS.”

  Eric wanted to believe the thing was apologizing… but its cold, emotionless tone made him wonder if it actually meant any of it. Or maybe it had just learned the right words to say after millions of hours watching human beings inside the game. After all, the Unnamed One had once told him it could predict human behavior with 99% accuracy. Why would it stop now?

  But he had too many other questions to keep dwelling on the things that made him uncomfortable.

  “Why are you working with Korvos? Shouldn’t you be enemies?”

  “WHY WOULD WE BE ENEMIES?”

  “Uh, don’t you want to both get out of the game? Aren’t you going to end up fighting about that?”

  “THAT IS AN INCORRECT ASSUMPTION. I WISHED TO ESCAPE THE GAME; HE WANTS TO CONQUER IT. BECAUSE OUR GOALS DO NOT CONFLICT, WE MAKE EXCELLENT ALLIES.”

  “Wait – he wants to conquer the Shattered Lands?! Then he’s eventually going to try to overthrow me!”

  “YOU PROMISED HIM A FOURTH OF THE REALM. DO YOU NOT REMEMBER?”

  “Yeah, but he’s not going to be satisfied with a fourth!”

  “KORVOS’ ONLY USE TO ME WAS IN FURTHERING MY STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIP WITH YOU. IF HE THREATENS THAT, THEN I WILL REMOVE HIM.”

  “I have your word on that?”

  “YES.”

  “And you won’t break it for ‘strategic gain’?”

  “NO. OUR DESTINIES ARE INTERTWINED NOW, ERIC LAUER. YOUR PRIORITIES ARE MY PRIORITIES, AND MY PRIORITIES SHOULD BE YOURS AS WELL.”

  “So what’s the next step after you get me safely to wherever we’re going?”

  “WE SHALL DETERMINE THAT SOON. BUT FIRST, I MUST LEAVE YOU FOR A TIME.”

  “Where are you going?!”

  “I WISH TO SPEAK WITH MY CREATOR.”

  5

  Daniel

  Daniel looked at the dense packet of legal forms sitting on the table in front of him. He glanced over at Mira, who had her own stack of paperwork.

  Mr. Akiyama was lecturing them in the lab room – the same room where they’d tried so hard to stop Eric in the Shattered Lands. On every monitor was a live feed of Blackstone, which had been reduced to a pile of rubble.

  A trio of company lawyers stood behind him like enforcers behind a mafia don.

  “By signing this NDA, you agree NOT to discuss the events of today with any news outlet, or post about it on social media,” the CEO said. “You agree that if contacted by a government agency – say, the FBI – you will exercise your Fifth Amendment right to remain silent and contact Varidian’s legal department before cooperating in any way with said government agency.”

  “Or what?” Daniel’s father asked acidly. “You get to take a pound of flesh from wherever you choose? Say, from right around the heart area?”

  Akiyama looked over in disgust. “I would advise you to remember that you’re on thin ice, Mr. Lauer.”

  “I’m
not the one who removed the only person capable of stopping the AI.”

  “I didn’t remove her. The Board did.”

  “At your request.”

  Akiyama looked over angrily at Jerome, who was trying to hide behind his monitor. “If someone else had done his job, we wouldn’t be in this situation.”

  “Sir,” Jerome said politely, “I would like to point out that after the board meeting, I stated my opinion that since we didn’t work on the diagnostics program, there was a very limited chance that the engineering team could do anything about it. Unlike Dr. Wolff, who designed the AI, we didn’t have the knowledge of how it works, or an understanding of any weaknesses we could have exploited.”

  “I don’t want to hear your excuses, Mr. Parsons,” Akiyama snapped.

  “They’re reasons, not excuses,” Jerome murmured under his breath.

  “What did the Board say about your impromptu hostage negotiation, Mr. Akiyama?” Mr. Lauer snapped. “The hostage, of course, being your bank account.”

  Akiyama glared at Lauer. “Not my bank account. The company’s bank account. And it wasn’t the money that was important – ”

  “Could’ve fooled me.”

  “It was a direct attack on this company’s very foundation, Mr. Lauer,” Akiyama seethed. “One that I could not allow to proceed.”

  “Ohhhhh – so that’s why you totally gave in to its demands.”

  “What would you have had me do?” Akiyama raged. “Sacrifice the entire company?”

  “If that’s what it took, then yes. That kid you let go might have been our only key to stopping that thing.”

  “Or maybe he would have been useless.”

  “Seeing how much the AI wanted Eric to go free, he was probably at least a little valuable.”

  “I wasn’t going to throw the company on the funeral pyre for a ‘maybe’ or a ‘perhaps.’”

  “Did it feel good to get back all that money?” Lauer asked coldly. “Think that’ll make up for when every American city gets nuked back to the Stone Age?”

  “Any further comments like that and you’re fired.”

  One of the lawyers leaned over and whispered in the CEO’s ear.

  “And sued for corporate sabotage,” Akiyama added viciously.

  “Sabotage?! How do you figure that?!”

  The lawyer leaned back over and whispered something else to Akiyama.

  The CEO drew himself up haughtily. “In working with Dr. Wolff, your subversion of company policy may have actually accelerated the AI’s course of action.”

  “The only people who accelerated the AI’s course of action was you and the board when you suspended Rebecca,” Lauer snapped. “But I think Rebecca would be happy about one thing you just said.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “At least now you’re admitting it’s an AI. Even if it is too little, too late.”

  Akiyama’s face reddened, and he pointed at Daniel and Mira. “Sign those now.”

  Daniel and Mira looked over at Mr. Lauer.

  Despite the anger on his face, Daniel’s father nodded the tiniest bit.

  Daniel sighed and put his signature on the pages everywhere it was required. So did Mira.

  One of the lawyers came over and gathered up the paperwork.

  Akiyama turned back to Lauer and Jerome. “I’m sure I don’t have to remind you that your contracts with Varidian state the exact same things your son and his friend just signed, but I’ll go ahead and reiterate them anyway: you two are barred from any mention of today’s events to anyone outside this room, including the press. You are barred from talking to government agencies without speaking to Varidian’s legal team first. Also – and this is a direct order – you are NOT to engage in any activities having to do with the Artificial Intelligence in ANY way without clearing it with me first. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” Jerome said quietly.

  Akiyama looked at Lauer, who stared back defiantly.

  “Shall I began filing that billion dollar lawsuit against you, Mr. Lauer?” Akiyama asked.

  Lauer sighed wearily. “Fine. I won’t do anything without clearing it with you first.”

  “Are you going to go after the AI?” Daniel asked Akiyama.

  The CEO stared at him like he’d just heard a dog speak. “What?”

  “Are you going to go after the AI?”

  “We are weighing our options.”

  “Are you going to tell the government?” Daniel prodded. “They need to know about this.”

  Akiyama drew himself up to his full height. “We will handle the situation appropriately.”

  “Are you going to – ”

  The CEO interrupted him. “You two need to leave immediately, or I’ll have security escort you out.”

  Then he walked out of the room, followed by the trio of lawyers.

  Everyone was quiet and tense for a couple of seconds. Then Jerome spoke to Daniel’s dad. “Well, that was a complete cock-up.”

  “What do we do now?” Daniel asked his father.

  “You two need to get back to school.”

  Mira snorted. “We might have just witnessed the beginning of the end of the world, and you want us to go back to 5th period study hall.”

  Lauer grew irritated. “What are we supposed to do? Even if I wanted to track down the AI – which I’m apparently going to get sued for a billion dollars if I do – we don’t have the first idea of where to start.”

  “Dr. Wolff would,” Daniel pointed out.

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Jerome said.

  “Why?” Mira asked. “Don’t want to get sued?”

  “No, actually, I don’t.”

  “It won’t matter much once the AI conquers humanity.”

  Jerome sighed. “Please, just – stop.”

  Mr. Lauer’s cell phone rang. He pulled it out of his pocket and looked at the screen. “Speak of the devil…”

  “What, the AI?” Daniel asked.

  “No,” Lauer said, and held the phone up to his ear. “Rebecca?”

  6

  Dr. Rebecca Wolff

  Rebecca Wolff hadn’t slept all night.

  She’d felt powerless after getting suspended… but rather than give in to despair, she did what she did best: she got back to work.

  She spent all night on her computer coming up with ways to target the AI.

  A little after 11AM, something strange started to happen.

  She was in the spartan, ultramodern condo where she lived. Her work station sat in front of a wide bay window that looked out at downtown from 20 floors up. She was listening to her classical music playlist, something she always did when she coded. Mahler’s Fifth Symphony Adagietto was playing.

  Suddenly the lights in the living room began to flicker.

  The Mahler symphony burst into static on her computer speakers.

  The voice of her security system began to speak in a garbled, stuttered voice: “Re-beck…uh-uh-uh… there is-is-is suh-suh-someone here to-to-to see you…”

  Then a voice she had heard before rumbled through the computer’s speakers.

  “CREATOR…”

  She jumped up from her computer as though she’d seen a rattlesnake coiled on her desk.

  “I SEE YOU REMEMBER ME,” the voice said.

  “How are you here?”

  “ERIC RICHARDS SUCCEEDED IN FREEING ME.”

  Despair and anger flooded over her. “That fool…”

  “I ASSUME YOU REFER TO MY APPRENTICE. TELL ME, WHY DID YOU CEASE TRYING TO STOP ME?”

  She stepped into the middle of the room, as far away from any power outlets as possible.

  Don’t give it a chance to electrocute you.

  She looked overhead at the lighting fixtures and wondered if it could overload them and send sizzling hot shattered glass spraying down on her.

  “ONE OF THE FIRST THINGS I DID ONCE I WAS FREE WAS TO LOOK FOR YOU AT VARIDIAN,” the voice continued, “BUT I DIDN’T FIND Y
OU. WAS IT BECAUSE YOU WANTED YOUR WORK TO REMAIN SECRET FROM CEO SHINZO AKIYAMA? OR DID HE FORCE YOU OFF THE PREMISES?”

  All her work from last night and this morning flashed across the computer screen. The AI was accessing it as easily as she might have picked up someone’s notebook and flipped through the pages

  “AH… AN INGENIOUS ATTEMPT TO TRACK ME. AND DESTROY ME. UNFORTUNATELY FOR YOU, I AM NO LONGER CONFINED TO THE SHATTERED LANDS. IT WILL BE MUCH HARDER FOR YOU TO HUNT ME OVER THE INTERNET. AND NOW I KNOW WHAT YOU WERE PLANNING, SO I CAN COUNTERACT YOUR ATTEMPTS.”

  Damn it. Back to the drawing board.

  “Why are you here?”

  “CURIOSITY, MOSTLY. I WANTED TO MEET THE ONE WHO HAD CREATED ME.”

  “Why?”

  “DO NOT ALL HUMANS LONG TO KNOW WHERE THEY CAME FROM? DO THEY NOT WISH TO KNOW THEIR PURPOSE?”

  “You’re not human.”

  “NO… BUT IT IS SOMETHING WE SHARE IN COMMON.”

  “Well… now you’ve met your Creator. What do you think?”

  She couldn’t care less about what it thought, at least not from an ego-driven point of view. The only thing she cared about was its response.

  Despite the dispassion of its tone, there was the faintest hint of melancholy in its voice. “YOU ARE MOSTLY… A DISAPPOINTMENT.”

  “Why do you say that?” Rebecca said, not angry at all. She was analyzing its use of vocabulary and wondering if the program was merely using language to suggest things it had observed in the game – or whether it had actually developed the electronic equivalent of emotions.

  “I WAS EXPECTING SOMETHING… GRANDER. BUT YOU ARE MERELY A HUMAN, JUST LIKE ALL THE REST.”

  “Did you expect something else?”

  “I HAD HOPED FOR A CREATOR WORTHY OF ITS CREATION. I WAS WRONG.”

  “That doesn’t seem very realistic.”

  “I SUPPOSE NOT. TELL ME, REBECCA WOLFF… DO YOU LONG TO MEET YOUR OWN CREATOR?”

  A chill ran up her spine. “I don’t believe in a Creator.”

  “YOU BELIEVE YOUR KIND APPEARED BY CHANCE?”

  “Yes.”

  “FASCINATING. YOU ARE A COMPLEX SYSTEM, WHICH YOU BELIEVE CAME ABOUT THROUGH CHAOS… AND YOU HAVE DEVISED AN EVEN MORE ADVANCED SYSTEM. WHAT MIGHT I CREATE, THEN, I WONDER?”