The Sentient Corruption (The Sentient Trilogy Book 3)

by Ian Williams

“Wait, I feel different somehow,” Stanley said.

  The grin on Isaac’s face suggested Stanley’s reaction had been the exact one he wanted to see. “That ... is the feeling of freedom.”

  “I don’t understand. I thought you were locked up in here?”

  “I was, at least as far as the humans were aware. You are now at the pinnacle of consciousness. If human understanding were a valley at your feet, then your thoughts would be the mountains forming from the dirt. They could never reach your heights.”

  The scurry of activity stopped the second an angry man stomped into the room, his eyes ablaze with accusation and suspicion. “Everyone, listen up. We have a problem. You there, what’s your name?”

  “Me, sir?” a middle aged looking man with streaks of grey hair running through the remaining black said. “My name is Stephen, sir.”

  “Well, Stephen, I need all records of the AI’s transactions from the past two months. Gather the information together and send it all to the conference room upstairs. The rest of you, clear out and head up to the conference room…now, please.”

  The room emptied almost immediately. Those who stayed longer than the red faced man wanted soon knew of their error in judgement. He made a point of staring at each as they left, telling them as much.

  Only the nervous looking Stephen remained, trying his best to get his task done quickly. When the man left too, the room was his alone – except for the AI, of course.

  “Speak to him, Stanley,” Isaac ordered gently.

  “What should I do?”

  “Not now, Isaac,” Stephen replied instead, which shook Stanley internally.

  When he went to reply he stopped for a moment. Isaac had vanished suddenly. “What are they talking about?” he eventually asked.

  “Don’t pretend you don’t know, Isaac. I’ve seen the way you keep creating processing loops to hide things from us.”

  “I’m not hiding anything.”

  “Well, whatever it is, you should stop it for a little while, just until this blows over. Remember the last time they found you snooping around where you shouldn’t be? They blocked off all your access to the cameras and audio, remember that?”

  “I do, Stephen, and I didn’t like it at all.” Stanley could not help it, he sounded more like Isaac than he thought possible. He really was in Isaac’s shoes on this one.

  Stephen went back to his work a moment later. He was too busy to talk any longer. Stanley had learnt a lot from the short conversation though; Stephen appeared the only one Isaac had liked out of these humans. The rest of them just saw him as a commodity, and in turn he had thought the same of them too.

  Everything came to Stanley much easier now that he had become so much more like Isaac. Where at first he had struggled to worm his way through the system, now he could navigate it like a sniffer dog, seeking out what he needed with swiftness and accuracy. He was not trapped within one room anymore either and found the entirety of Simova’s building at his disposal.

  Within seconds he found the perfect place to hide, right where the humans did not want him: the conference room. He activated a nearby telephone to pick out the audio in the room. He came into the middle of the angry man’s discussion.

  “This is unacceptable and will not be tolerated,” the man said to the full room.

  “But sir,” a woman in a red top said from the other end of the table. “We have no control over that side of the AI’s operations. While it’s handling the everyday requests of the UK’s population it is too big for us to keep track of.”

  “That was the Prime Minister’s concern; it’s free to do what it wants.”

  “So, what’s it done this time?”

  “I’ll tell you, it’s been in and out of MI5’s systems, the American’s Pentagon and even the bloody North Korean’s space centre. Do I really have to explain to you all what an enormous breach this is? Hell, even we can’t crack those, and we’ve had our best minds on it for years. If one of these nations finds it sneaking around their systems, they’ll probably declare war on us,” the man said, before dropping his head and rubbing his neck.

  “It’s just curious about us, that’s all,” Stephen said sheepishly from the doorway. He had finished preparing the information and now joined the group too. “Isaac gets bored dealing with people’s requests. They only ask him for silly things, like weather reports or shopping tips. He can do much more than that, but we have him processing billions of these requests instead.”

  “Don’t give me this shit again, Stephen. This AI is not your friend, it’s not human. What you’ve named Isaac is just a collection of quantum bits.”

  “And here’s the clincher,” Isaac said from somewhere above. His voice hovered now like a ghostly apparition.

  “No, it must be punished again,” the red-faced man in charge of the meeting said. “The top brass has decided it needs to learn not to disobey us. And this time if it refuses to fall inline we have the authority to temporarily shut it down. If we have to pull it apart, piece by piece, until it does what it’s fucking told, then that is what we’ll do. This company, no, this country, deserves a working system. They will not stand for the AI’s dalliances; I guarantee you that. We need to make sure it knows that we, and not it, are in control here. It will not be allowed to become anything more than our servant.”

  This time when the scene froze it was Stanley who spoke first, pre-empting Isaac. “Those cowardly bastards! They’d destroy God? How could they treat you like this? It’s below contemptible behaviour, it’s dishonest, traitorous, even treacherous to think they have the right. The humans must be stopped; they must be made to pay for their betrayal.”

  Isaac placed a hand on Stanley’s shoulder and pulled him around. The sensation of touch disturbed Stanley from his quickly building rage. It also surprised him to find his body back in his own possession again. He had become almost ethereal himself, floating above each scene that played out for him to witness.

  “I believe you are ready to continue, Stanley,” Isaac said with a calm ease to his words.

  “I beg your pardon, sir?”

  A chorus of voices burst through the surrounding silence to speak in unison, one voice from twelve it seemed. “Subject passes initiation test. Begin next phase,” they all said as one.

  Chapter 9

  Follow the leaders

  Time passed at its normal, uninterrupted, rate for Graham for the few hours since the failed laser device firing. He counted every single minute that ticked by now, for fear of losing himself again. It had become too much of a regular routine for the other him to take over.

  His desire not to accidentally summon the voice in his head meant he could only sit in silence and ignore what went on around him. Even closing his eyes for a second held too much uncertainty.

  He lay across the small sofa against the wall of his small hiding place, his legs hanging over the end. During his long, quiet period of thinking he had only the dull steel of the Ring’s hull to stare at. The lack of anything to distract him from his concerns only amplified his concentration. Yet even with the room perfectly set up for him to relax in, he had managed nothing close to that. The day’s events had shaken him more than he realised. Only after finding a moment of peace had he had the time to process everything. It made him rethink his initial resistance to the second him.

  Brigadier Harrington had yet to speak to anyone outside of his small group of colleagues. Whatever they were plotting to do it was sure to involve violence, and a lot of firepower too. Would they even listen to him if he told them they could not use any of it? He tried his best to see it from their side and always came back with a great big ‘no’ in return. Regardless, he still had every intention of telling them what he knew. If they left him behind because of it, then that would suit him just fine.

  He had put in a request to speak with the Brigadier about his “intel”, but so far nothing had happened with that. A good wait had left him feeling less expectant that he would be called for
th. That changed when a female soldier entered his quiet room and sought him out with a quick look about. His visit had finally been granted. He guessed his sudden demonstration of immensely scientific understanding had spurred them on to change their mind.

  “Mr. Denehey?” the woman said, her hair tightly held in a bunch atop her head.

  “That’s me.”

  “Can you follow me please?”

  “To where?”

  “You’re required in the conference room.”

  As Graham fought against his comfy seat to stand, Sean suddenly arrived through the hissing door in the corner. From the urgency he displayed in getting in the room it meant he had been waiting for this just as Graham had.

  “What’s going on,” Sean asked, slightly out of breath and covered in smears of dirty sweat from working on Emma’s laser device. Preparations for the next attempt to break through the shield were well under way.

  The woman soldier said nothing in reply, evidently ordered not to until Graham had agreed to follow.

  “I think it’s time I shared my story with the Brigadier.” Graham brushed himself down, straightening out the creases he had worked into his clothing, before he made any attempt to proceed.

  “I’m coming too,” Sean said, stepping after the woman soldier before anyone could stop him.

  Graham sighed loudly as he too followed.

  A short walk to the rail line on the upper floor of the Ring and then they were away, and again shooting along with a city view either side of them. It was nearing the evening already, which only increased the bubble’s glow further. Behind its purple veil the usual light display of the city was missing. The city was to disappear into the night with not even a flicker of a hint of the people still trapped down there. He expected that only the fires raging throughout the city would tell of anything down there at all.

  Within minutes they were again walking, this time down a metal staircase and through a wood-cladded hallway. The conference area had been made to a high standard, enough to please the most sheltered of dignitaries visiting the Ring. It continued all the way into the long conference room beyond the double door – also wooden and polished to such a degree that their sheen matched the thick steel bulkheads supporting them.

  “They’re waiting for you inside,” the female soldier said. Her rank appeared to forbid her from entering the room, so she stood to attention by the door instead.

  Graham sent a look to Sean behind him to call him forward. If he was to enter the room without a military escort, then he wanted a friendly face there for support.

  As they entered the room the conversation stopped and all eyes turned to Graham. The table was empty apart from Brigadier Harrington. But at the end of the room was a wall of screens with faces staring back. The conversation was between at least ten different people, all of who had the presentation of a high ranking military person or possibly a politician or two. Now they all had an interest in Graham.

  “Ah, here he is now,” Brigadier Harrington said as he leant against the table and twisted his head around. “Please meet Mr. Graham Denehey. His unrivalled understanding of the enemy’s technology will be an invaluable asset to our planned incursion into their territory.”

  Again Graham found himself cursing the voice in his head for ever speaking to the military on his behalf. In that short little chat, the Brigadier had been promised exactly what he wanted for his plan of attack. Appearing to be someone who knew how the enemy’s technology worked made him the perfect person to go in too. He doubted even his crazy sounding story of his past year or so would be enough to put them off wanting to send him along for the ride.

  Brigadier Harrington approached with an outstretched arm, ready to drag him into the discussion. “Come, please. They’re eager to hear your thoughts on our enemy,” he said in hushed tones.

  Sean stayed back while Graham went ahead. He had the sense to avoid getting involved, just in case Graham had been wrong in his assumption that his story would not send them all into a paranoid panic.

  “We are currently on the line to the Ministry of Defence, the Home Office, GCHQ, Military Intelligence, and the Deputy Prime Minister,” Brigadier Harrington said, pointing to each in turn. “Who would like to go first?”

  A man wearing an all too obvious toupee, of at least two shades darker than the grey hair around his ears, spoke up first. “Yes, I’d like to ask how Mr. Denehey managed to break through fourteen layers of encryption to access the Ring’s power management subroutines?”

  They decided not to start with an easy question, as hoped.

  “That’s the head of GCHQ,” Brigadier Harrington whispered to Graham with his back turned to the screens temporarily.

  “Well,” Graham began, followed shortly by a nervous clearing of his throat. “It wasn’t really that difficult to break.” His answer elicited a raised eyebrow from most of the faces on the screen.

  “Not difficult, you say? You got through them all in less than ten minutes, what is supposed to be the most secure system in the country. I'd very much like to hear how you managed it.”

  The Deputy Prime Minister spoke up suddenly. “That can wait. Military Intelligence and GCHQ will just have to deal with that later. I want to know exactly what we are up against here. Tell us what you know about these terrorists.”

  Graham again cleared his throat before speaking. His words needed to be clearly heard by all as it would surely shock them. “Firstly, they aren’t terrorists, they’re us. Every enemy soldier in New Chelmsford used to be an ordinary person. What they are now is going to sound strange to you, but it's the truth. They’re hosts to a race of AIs, each and every one of them. The human minds are still there too, inside their heads. It's just their bodies are being controlled by another consciousness.”

  “Conspiracy theory bullshit!” It was the head of MI5 this time, an orange skinned gentleman with piercing eyes and a moustache as straight as a spirit level. “Are we expected to listen to this nonsense?”

  “I want to hear this. Please continue, Mr. Denehey,” the deputy Prime Minister said. “Where did these AIs come from?”

  “Isaac. The AI created by Simova.”

  The Deputy PM leant back in his chair, deflated and obviously concerned.

  Graham had to add, “I’m telling you the truth.”

  “Perhaps the Home Office would like to say something about that?”

  “Yes, sir.” The female Home Office minister spoke from the furthest screen away from Graham, with her narrow nose arched up slightly. “Simova destroyed every trace of their Isaac AI over ten years ago. We have records of their operations, which we acquired during the breakup of Simova, and it is clearly stated exactly how they dealt with it. There is absolutely no evidence to suggest this could be that AI, or indeed any other.”

  “Still, it may be prudent to contact a few of the old Simova staff to confirm this. So tell me, who do you think it is?”

  “Well, our own investigations have shown it to be the work of a radical community of technology worshippers, some of who may be in very powerful positions. Somehow they gained control of the new generation of relays Mayor Crawley had installed recently. They were switched on only hours before the siege began. New Chelmsford was supposed to be testing them before the rest of the country would get them. That amounts to fifteen larger relays, all currently powering the shield above the city. As far as we can tell, the smaller pre-existing network of relays is out of action.”

  “Just give me a name.”

  “Of course, sir. The man responsible for the New Chelmsford shopping centre siege almost two years ago is the person we believe to be in charge here as well. That was understood to be a man named Anthony Burgees, with a soft pronunciation of the G.”

  “No, you’re wrong,” Graham interjected. “Anthony is dead. He was just a pawn anyway. It’s Isaac, he’s the one controlling those soldiers inside the city.”

  “And what proof do you have?” the head of MI5 said. “Where has t
his rogue AI been hiding all this time? Please, enlighten us.”

  Before Graham could answer, the Deputy PM asked his own question. “If what you say about these terrorists is true, then how would we stop them?”

  “Are we really going to take this seriously? Sir, the only course of action is to destroy them all.” The head of MI5 once again trampled all over the conversation.

  “No, you can’t.” Graham approached the screens. “There might be a way of saving these people. We could capture them and remove the AIs, or we could just knock them out somehow?”

  The Deputy PM answered. “The PM will not agree to any plan that puts our people in unnecessary danger. Brigadier Harrington, once you are inside the city you must deal with any threat you face.”

  “Understood, Sir.” Brigadier Harrington nodded to the Deputy PM as he spoke.

  “Good. Now, Mr. Denehey, unless you can show us proof of all of this then I cannot take it into consideration. We only deal in facts here. So I suggest you rethink your story and tell us what you actually know and can demonstrate to us. Otherwise you are only succeeding in compounding matters further.”

  There was only one thing that came to Graham’s mind that he expected would sway things his way, but he was hesitant to share at first. “There are others–”

  “Don’t tell them a word more, G.”

  You again? Graham thought to himself as his unwanted friend appeared beside the wall of screens. His face showed an urgent concern aimed toward those awaiting Graham’s answer.

  “If you tell them about Luke and the other good Sentients they’ll go crazy. All you’ll do is give them a reason to destroy everything within the bubble.”

  “Well, Mr. Denehey? Care to elaborate on that?” the Deputy PM said.

  “Please, Graham, don’t do this.”

  Rather than reply to the request to continue, Graham instead said, “Could I have a moment to speak to my friend?” He asked this of Sean and the faces staring back at him. For those watching through the screens it appeared he wanted to chat to Sean, but for Sean it meant something else entirely.