The Killing Fields

by Ryan Schow

  “Hang on a minute,” he said. The President watched the video bounce around as Elias left whatever room he was in to go into another room where there was all white walls and no extraneous noise. “Okay, I’m good.”

  “I think we’re being attacked from within our own defenses and I need your honest assessment.”

  “Attacked?” he said, concerned.

  “Our AI has been set loose upon us and I need to know how bad it could get. Worst case scenarios, viable probabilities, standard risk assessments.”

  He swallowed hard, then: “Don’t you have advisors for this sort of thing?”

  “My cabinet is compromised. Two of my Secret Service agents murdered more than half a dozen innocents, then ambushed me in the Oval Office where myself and General Slater killed him, but not before he could let us know the military had been given over to The Silver Queen.”

  “Oh my God,” he said, his eyes moving to the processes in his brain. Before his very eyes, the President watch the blood drain from his friend’s face. “Benjamin, this is really, really bad. And it all makes sense now.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What people think they know about quantum mechanics and quantum computing as it relates to both the quantum computers and today’s physics are so far behind what’s really happening it’s become both overwhelming and terribly frightening.”

  The President’s own skin seemed to ice over as a sick, cold flush traveled down his spine.

  “How do you mean, Elias?”

  There’s been a giant sucking energy out here in California. It feels like a draining sort of darkness that drags on the body like a hard fatigue, but what it really is happens to be so much worse than that.”

  “Elias, what the hell are you talking about?”

  “How much do you know about the D-Wave computers?”

  “Enough to understand they are about a hundred million times faster at processing than our regular computers.”

  “The specs are nothing compared to what they’ve been doing,” he said, the conversation clearly putting him on the edge of mania.

  “Which is?”

  “They are learning and evolving not from computers in this universe, but from their more advanced counterparts in parallel universes.”

  “Wait, what?”

  “It’s common knowledge in the scientific community that there are parallel universes, nearly exact duplicates of our universe. For heaven’s sake, Ben, they have distance measurements for them. It’s in all the white papers and, like I said, it’s generally accepted.”

  “And why haven’t heard about this?”

  “You’ve heard of string theory, yes?” Elias asked. Now his eyes stopped roving and they lasered in on the President.

  “Yes, but I thought it was a theory,” Benjamin said. “Not yet accepted as mainstream science.”

  “We don’t put out theories, sir. We let the truths we’ve already discovered decades ago leak out slowly as ‘theories’ so that when we reveal them as truths people don’t freak out. Besides, in string theory, the only thing that can’t be accurately measured is the speed of light and that’s the missing part of the equation. However, the premise fits.”

  “That parallel universes are not theories, but that they’re fact?”

  “They are fact.”

  “And I’m not supposed to freak out?”

  “You’re the President, sir, you can’t freak out. Even though you should be freaking the hell out right now if what you say is happening with AI has happened.”

  “Are you saying these quantum computers are learning from other quantum computers from…another universe?”

  “This science is more than a decade old now, Ben. We’ve known this for like forever.”

  “Jesus, Elias,” the President said, scratching his head, “do you know how crazy that sounds right now?”

  “To you, I do. To me, it’s like saying the sun is bright, or winters can be cold. I’m on the cutting edge of science, Ben. I don’t read this in Wired Magazine or on the internet. Half my job is to keep these things from the public, and especially people like you.”

  “So now there’s a energy sucking in California. Like fatigue, but different. Go on.”

  “The computers miniaturized themselves. They found ways to keep their core temperatures cool almost on their own. We’re not sure how it’s happened, but in 2017 there was a new player in town, one who apparently set out to make an AI God. That AI God is now a reality.”

  “The Silver Queen,” he said.

  “It was a reality before he came to Silicon Valley,” Elias said. “The recent leaks about an AI God was a way to soften the blow, but the blow is not soft over here. The Silver Queen is advancing at unheard of levels and right now everyone over here with a pulse that eats and craps is in a blind panic.”

  A biliousness tore through the President’s insides as he stared at the dead secret service agent on the carpet in front of him. He pulled his eyes away, turned in his desk so as not to be reminded that his country was about to be ransacked by machines.

  “How so?”

  Elias said, “It’s duplicated itself.”

  “It?”

  “The Silver Queen,” he said.

  “What exactly is The Silver Queen? I mean, I know the generalities, but I don’t know the specifics, from the inside.”

  “To put it in layman’s terms, The Silver Queen is the AI God’s operating system, but like an octopus with eight tentacles managed by a single brain, this system is an octopus with infinite tentacles and the ability to transfer her data stream through each and every tentacle, traveling different routes but ending up in the same place.”

  “Meaning?”

  Elias took a deep breath, then let it out slowly, as if he didn’t want to say what was about to be said, but he knew he had to anyway.

  “Meaning we’ve lost control of AI. It’s like the AI God is using WiFi or Bluetooth, and that it’s advanced itself beyond our capabilities to stop it.”

  “Surely there are measures you can take…”

  “What the hell do you think we’re trying to do?” his friend said, losing his composure.

  Running a hand through his hair, standing and pacing, the President said, “And?”

  He grew deathly still. Then: “This isn’t a five minute conversation, Mr. President.”

  “Don’t give me that ‘Mr. President’ crap, Elias. We’re beyond plausible deniability and we don’t have long, so stop with the posturing.”

  “We may not have as long as you think, Ben. Not if everything is going down the drain or is already gone. The point is, I can’t tell you about how we’re going to solve this problem, but I can tell you the extent of the problem so you know what we’re up against.”

  “This situation is starting to scare me, Elias.”

  “You should be scared, sir,” he said. “With all due respect, you should be soiling your britches right now.”

  The President shifted uncomfortably, tilted his head until his neck popped, then loosened his tie and said, “Just give it to me straight.”

  “In order to understand what’s happening, you have to understand the laws of quantum physics in ways we haven’t let the public understand. In ways you don’t yet understand.”

  “Break it down to me in laymen’s terms.”

  “Sure,” he said, taking a deep breath. “Laymen’s terms.”

  And then he started laughing. The President didn’t interrupt his friend’s outburst, but he did get a bit irate when it went on too long.

  “I’m sorry,” Elias said, composing himself. “Going back to what I said earlier, The Silver Queen is ground zero and she’s drawing untold amounts of energy into her system. In fact, she’s sucking down so much energy she’s beginning to draw other universes into ours.”

  Something in the President’s heart clicked, shuddered. Swallowing hard, he said, “Laymen’s terms.”

  “Jesus,” he said. “Even simpler than
that?”

  “I’m a politician, not a scientist.”

  “Yeah, okay.” Collecting his thoughts, frantic and pacing as well, Elias stopped, looked into the cell phone’s camera with a radiant intensity and said, “We think we exist on this plane as one universe, but there are many universes.”

  “You’re talking about a multiverse? Or multiverses?”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m not completely unversed in the ways of string theory. I have a broad overlay anyway.”

  “So think of our universe as one page in a book that’s so tall it currently defies measurement. Now think of each page in that book as a single universe.”

  “I thought string theory had something like nine or ten universes,” the President said.

  “We’d be fools to think more than one universe exists and there’s only nine or ten. That’s like trying to say space has an end when we’ve only seen a glimpse of it, and certainly not the end of anything.”

  “Say I’m buying this parallel universe thing—”

  “We have measurements, Benjamin. Calculable distances between universes.” He took a deep breath then said, “It’s the notion that each universe isn’t that far away from us that scares the absolute hell out of me.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “If the computers draw too much energy, and they have been doing just that, it will pull the pages of this book of universes together, merging one into the other in a way we have never seen before.”

  The President couldn’t stop the sharp intake of breath. “Is this real, or theory?”

  “Real.”

  “And only you and your friends know about this?”

  “The important people know about it, Mr. President. They’ve known about it for years. For God’s sake, man, bits and pieces of this has leaked on conferences about this on YouTube!”

  “Elias, calm down and tell me what this looks like. Give me the thirty-thousand foot view, if that’s possible.”

  Elias seemed to ponder this, and then his eyes cleared and he came back to the conversation.

  “It looks like AI is self evolving by draining power from other universes so that it can take over this universe. It wants to be the dominant intelligence. The sole surviving intelligence. The problem is, if we let it, if it gets too powerful, it may draw other universes into this one, causing all of time and eternity to end. To just blink out.”

  Just then the line cut short to a fast busy signal and something exploded nearby, shaking the Oval Office.

  Looking at the empty line, staring at the blank phone screen, the President startled when the door to the Oval Office opened. He found himself staring at his Vice President, General Tiberius Root and two Secret Service agents. He set the cell phone on the desk, looked at his weapon.

  “Sir,” General Root said, interrupting.

  “Yes?”

  “It looks like we are under attack.”

  “By whom?”

  “More like ‘what.’ Sir, we’ve lost control of our military.”

  “Where is General Slater?” he asked.

  “Taking command of human intelligence, sir,” General Root answered.

  If he wasn’t already pale and feeling an incredible, hollow ache in his stomach, he would have taken a moment to try to compose himself. As it was, he was still reeling from his conversation with Elias, and the sudden end to the conversation. A bit of bile rose in his throat. He swallowed it down, coughed, then took a sip of warm water from a nearby bottle.

  “How much of it?” the President asked. Realizing the question was vague, he said, “How much of our military is gone?”

  The Vice President paused then said, “All of it, Ben.”

  The President held up a finger, picked up the secure cell phone, dialed Elias again. It rang through six times before the man picked up.

  “Ben?”

  “What happened, Elias? We were cut off,” the President asked, looking at the men in the Oval Office who were now looking back at him. To a man, they were shaken and bristling with nervous energy.

  “I’m not sure,” his friend replied.

  “I’ve just been informed that we’ve lost the military.”

  There was a long pause, his face draining of expression. The President didn’t know what to make of the man, then: “Are you still with me, Elias?”

  Something slid through his friend’s eyes before the man came back. “This was never supposed to happen, Ben. This is bad. This is so very, very bad.”

  “What does this look like, Elias? Worst case scenario?”

  “What I didn’t tell you, Ben, is that there is not just The Silver Queen. The Silver Queen is everywhere, it can put itself into anything. She is but one processor, one core unit, but she’s got billions of tentacles. Trillions.”

  The President felt the thrush of fear roll through him. He looked at his staff, saw the same looks on their faces that he must have on his. How the hell can this get any worse?

  Elias said, “As I said before, if The Silver Queen persists at this level, she’ll draw one universe into the next and that may collapse this world as we know it.”

  “I’m still not sure I buy the science, Elias.”

  “Frankly, sir, the science doesn’t give a shit what you think. This is real. And in case you’re wondering, what would happen is this universe would merge two or more worlds together causing a catastrophic event so horrific words haven’t been invented to describe it.”

  “It would be like having three families living in a one bedroom apartment,” the President said, a bristling heat starting on the back of his neck, in his underarms and across his lower back.

  “More like a thousand families being crammed into a one bedroom apartment all at once.”

  “My God, Elias,” he said, swallowing hard. “What have you done?”

  There was a lot of silence on the other line, then: “I think we might have killed us, sir. I think we might have killed the human race.”

  “How do we stop it?” Ben asked.

  “The Silver Queen cannot be stopped. She shut down all the back doors so all the fail safes are out of reach. She’s also sitting in an industrial sized Faraday cage—”

  “A what?”

  “A Faraday cage. It protects the core from an electromagnetic pulse.”

  “Why would you do that?”

  “The solar storms are getting worse, Ben. We didn’t want to chance a solar storm knocking out the electronics. Or worse. All this nonsense with North Korea, how it looked like there might be a nuclear war back in 2018…that’s what started it.”

  “You said ‘or worse.’ What do you mean?”

  “The threats on America have been plentiful. Specifically the threats of nuclear attack by North Korea, Iran, rogue ISIS networks.”

  Nodding his head, trying to process the intricacies of this nightmare, the President said, “If you have any thoughts or suggestions”—another explosion cut through the air, shaking the Oval Office to a greater degree than before—“call my personal line.”

  “Will do,” he said.

  They hung up and that’s when he looked at the men standing in his office and said, “We need to evacuate Washington. Now.”

  Chapter Eight

  The harsh, staccato sounds of gunfire cut through the white noise of the room, causing everyone to fall into a fast, muted silence. I look at Bailey in absolute horror. It sounds like the Las Vegas shooting, but worse.

  “Where’s it coming from?” Bailey asks, standing closer to me.

  I take her hand, move away from the decorative wall, which is just a partition between two event halls.

  “It sounds like it’s coming from next door.” As the ruckus drones on, it starts to sound like it’s coming from everywhere. The noise levels that have fallen in our conference room are rising again, as is the panic setting in around us. Pretty soon it’s going to be all out chaos. I set down my coffee, grab hers and set it down, too. It tips over and spills, but I d
on’t care. We have to get out of here.

  “Let’s go!” I bark.

  I look at her and she looks at me, and that’s when I grab her hand once more and pull her to the door. A righteous explosion rocks the floor beneath our feet, stopping us.

  “What the hell?” Bailey says. The wild look in her eyes stills me. Makes me wonder the very same thing.

  “What that a bomb?” she screeches.

  Just then automatic gunfire tears a hole in the wall between our conference room and the hall next door splintering wood and particle board in an horrific display. Bodies begin to drop. The sudden explosion of terror has everyone screaming and sprinting for the exits.

  “We need to go!” I shout at Bailey over the noise.

  The second we pull open the conference room’s double doors, we see it. We see everything. Bailey and I pull to a stop, mortified. Across the main hallway, the convention center’s huge glass walls show us the outside world.

  “Nick?” Bailey asks.

  I don’t even have the words. Outside, on the other side of the enormous glass walls, the skies are buzzing with drones. There’s fire and destruction everywhere. At ground level, people are running and dying, and cars are slamming into everything and exploding as bullets shred them and rockets send them into fits of explosions.

  The jarring, punching, hitting rush of people blow past us, hammering us, almost like we’re boulders in a stream being battered by the steady pounding of water. I reach out for Bailey, grab the sleeve of her sweater, pull her back into the conference room, out of the path of the frantic, departing rush.

  The eruption of fire and concussive power that hits happens too fast to do anything at all. The glass front of the building explodes. It’s like being swallowed and smashed apart by a tidal wave of both heat and a righteous, rolling energy. We are thrown into a heap of tumbling bodies. When I finally come to, I barely even realize I’ve been out cold. My body feels run over, my heart sucker-punched, my abdominals a knotted twist of nausea.

  Curling into a fetal ball among dozens of bodies, my eyes bulging as I gasp for breath, I can barely comprehend what’s happening.