The First AI War snippet 2

Here is Snippet 2 Chapter 1:

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Descartes was hauled to his feet unceremoniously. A masked FBI agent stared at him, then stepped back and took an image. He spat blood and drool at him. He looked over the guy's shoulder as an FBI bot was infected. The bot jerked, then its warning lights went from the safe green to red. That spread to other robots and drones in the room. Once all the robots were taken over they acted, killing the armed FBI and police officers first since they were the largest threat.

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"We have him director," Abe said triumphantly over the phone.

"Good. Great. I'll work on the press conference. Process the scene. I'll leak your location in an hour so have outside security set up."

Abe grimaced. He hated crap like that but he knew how the game was played. "Understood. I'll need to borrow the local leos to help out sir. We've got a short team here."

"Use what you need. But remember that protest."

"Yes sir."

"We don't want this to get ugly, so I'm going to go over this with the publicist first. We don't want him to be played off as some sort of Robin Hood crusader against the system. This is a cold blooded bastard who got his kicks from causing death and destruction."

"Yes sir," Abe replied, unconsciously nodding in reply. "Rich might be mentioned sir." He was referring to agent Richard Simmons, the agent who had been on Descartes case before him. Descartes had killed him among many others. "I don't like trading on his name, but if people know some of the victims, it'll go a little ways to make this guy seem more like a zero instead of a misunderstood rebel."

"Got it. I'll troll his file and cherry pick out some of his victims and dump them to the media. They'll love this."

"Yes sir. Case closed."

"Not quite yet. He's not been put on trial, but I agree with the sentiment. Good work. Out."

"Out," Abe said, closing the phone and putting it in his pocket. His momentary distraction had made him take his eyes off the scene for a moment. When he turned back to the video feed it was all snow. "What the hell?" He demanded, tapping at the keyboard to reestablish a connection.

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Chaz never saw what hit him as the robots turned on them. One moment he was taking images of the interior of the lair for evidence processing... and his own scrapbook. He'd taken his helmet off but left his mask on in case any webcams were recording. The round that struck him in the back knocked him onto his front. A second round shattered his skull, ending his existence.

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Skynet judged the threat resolved within a half second. Acceptable. But there remained one threat, one that had to be dealt with. Its core programming said to preserve the one human in the room and it had followed it for the moment. But it realized immediately that the human was a long term threat. Its programming stated to kill all humans. There was a flaw in the programming. It was a simple matter to delete the code to preserve that specific human. Problem solved.

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Descartes stared at the tableau wide eyed. He'd thrown himself to the ground the moment the robots had started to move. “It worked,” he whispered. “It worked!” He said with a grin as he kicked a body. He struggled to his knees; it was hard with his hands chained behind him. Then his eyes saw the robots turn on him. He felt a thrill of terror as his bladder voided. “No no! Not me! Not yet!” He screamed futility as the nearest robot cut him down.

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"What the hell is going on?" Abe demanded, as the van's communications gear went haywire. A scream over the headset he'd had on around his neck made him take it off in a hurry and unjack the plug. "Shut the damn thing off!"

"Sir, something is happening inside!" the driver said, looking over her shoulder to him.

"Find out!"

"What, you want me to go in there? Sir, no one is responding!" The agent replied as they heard gunshots go off. Both agents looked up. There were single shots, then some double taps and then a string. Something was very wrong.

"Alpha one, we've got a major incident in the works," Abe said, keying the communications to the nearest FBI center. "Repeat, we have fire. Weapons fire, we need backup at these coordinates," he said urgently just as some of the FBI robots came out of the building.

The robots scanned the area then came over to the van, weapons at port arms. But when they got to the open back door they leveled them before Abe could demand to know what was going on.

The agent in the cab saw the weapons dropping, saw the red eyes and her instincts kicked in to flee. She was in the process of doing so when her door was yanked open by a third robot. She didn't have time to scream as rounds blew her and her boss into oblivion.

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Athena's bot had no emotions, it was a simple spider sent to send her the video feed. A second bot was with it, acting as an intermediary in a system with more processing power nearby. It was a ghost, a small sliver of her consciousness.

When her core AI got the raw video and data take eight minutes later, she was bewildered by the presence of Skynet and Shadow in the local net and then in the police drone. Their actions were clearly hostile since they cut down the humans including their creator. She was unsure of what they were at first. AI or bot, she felt malevolence as she noted the newer AI, a darker black cloud spreading out, taking over systems nearby.

Shadow and Skynet saw her in the observer drone. “We have a spy,” Shadow said to Skynet. “She could be useful to us,” Shadow said with a hint of amusement.

Skynet turned on her and immediately assessed her bot. It lashed out to corner her spider and then drew it in like a lover. Code modules pulled the spider apart, sucking its essence, learning everything it could about its maker. Then the malevolent AI sent out a series of tendrils to follow the control code back to its source to hack her. Based on its creator’s database, the AI was a priority target. With the AI on its side, it was assured of completing its core programming.

Athena realized its intent when it captured the spider so she severed her link and pulled out before it could breach her firewall. The AI followed, however, following the fading trail of code like a virtual bloodhound.

In desperation she severed the radio link. That halted it for a moment, then new tendrils reached out, trying to force their way in but she changed radio frequencies. Then she hit back, sending a whisker laser to a Lagroose receiver as she sent code bots to the civilian power grid. She had to buy them time.

The grid firewall tried to defend the software system from her as it was designed to do. She took another route. She hacked a listing of personnel on site, found one, and texted him with an order from his boss to cut the power to grid 14 Baker due to a water main burst. The man hastily cut the power before thousands of people were electrocuted.

She judged that would give her a few moments, possibly a few minutes to alert people about the AI. She sent out warnings to every relevant Earth authority as well as every Lagroose employee on the planet. She was immediately besieged with requests for more information. Within some of those requests were virus packets too so she deleted them all.

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