The room stank vaguely of urine and stale nicsticks.
J.Rile wrinkled his nose at the smell. Used to glanding his narcotics and nootropics, he always thought nicsticks were just disgusting. Even a drug addict should have some standards, he mused to himself.
To be fair, this was the smell of the neighborhood overall in varying degrees and intensities. The faded bio-luminescent painted hallways, with their long darkened cracks highlighted the age of these decaying housing structures, left long unused. Most of these buildings were empty and the street that led here was unremarkable. Empty after the plagues of 2106, fear of outbreak kept most people from returning, giving the building complex a frightening aura filled with the deaths of thousands.
Being driven here, squeezed between two man-mountains, in an unpleasantly tight econo-box, that reeked from the smoky biofuel used to power it at three in the morning did nothing to lessen the terror factor. When they showed up at his hotel coffin, they knocked politely and when the door popped open and he pulled himself out, no one brandished a weapon. No one needed to. One look at their gene-hacked hands, covered in thick green scales and their massive bodies told J.Rile everything he needed to know. These men worked for the Eco-front and it was time to report. He only wished he had better news.
"What happened?" The figure sat in a chair across the darkened room. His face was never seen by anyone outside the organization. His voice was voxed to mask it from recognition. It came from all over the room, adding to its otherworldly quality.
"Sir," he began slowly, trying to hide his terrible accent, "we hacked the data structures and were able to gain access to their defense network. We were inside the building and had set up our drop-in point in the basement. Once we penetrated it, we found several...irregularities." Beads of sweat formed on the poorly dressed man who stood by the door with two the menacing guards whose hands had the reptilian habit of opening and closing slowly and rhythmically.
"You assured me you would be able to acquire the package. We lost two operatives to ensure you the opportunity to install your kit. Now you report in two months later after I had to go and find you, and you tell me are unsuccessful. Why am I not letting these two rip you in to bite-sized pieces for my dogs?"
J.Rile listened and realized if he were going to be killed, it would have happened already. The Man in the Dark was letting off steam. Feeling a bit angry he replied, "Look, we completed part of the mission. The software did not get off-planet and that slows the corporate expansions and explorations because they can't use the K-9000 robots to subdue the locals. We did not count on their being power fluctuations and poorly wired network configurations. When the networks stabilized, the routers redirected our package to a backup server. But I think there was more to it than that."
"Go on." He sounded intrigued with this line of thought.
"This was unlike any AI I had ever interacted with. Our normal handling tools seemed barely able to control it and I swear it seemed to be trying to escape even as we offered it a safe refuge. It appeared to go along with us until it could make a break for it. We had wrapped it in the normal code barriers for transport and that should have made it completely docile. But it did not act like the normal caged AIs I was used to."
"It is possible the singulo-intellect engines were as advanced as we were led to believe. It is why they made such an effort to encrypt and encode the hardware so it could not be replicated without the proper protocols. This has worked to our favor because without this software, the hundreds of robots sitting in their warehouses cannot be used by anyone." Not liking this train of thought, he leaned forward and stared down the room at the skinny hacker whose eyes shined brightly as he began to retrace his steps mentally. He suspected the hacker was glanding some biotic memory enhancer to better visualize the event.
J. Rile stood for a moment, swaying while his eyes rolled back into his head. He was replaying his hack and looked as if he had an epiphany. "You are saying this was a class of AI beyond what is currently in use?"
"It would have to be able to adapt to alien environments, deal with unknown conditions and repair, modify or replace parts of itself without interacting with its home environment. It would need heuristically-adaptive properties, able to learn and grow as its circumstances changed." The Man in the Dark seemed to be thinking along the same lines as J. Rile and their thinking was reinforcing each other.
J.Rile began to pace nervously and then began to rattle off a series of thoughts, rapid fire, as if he were attempting to target an evasive thought. "What if we were to consider this differently. What if their scientists did not know what they really created? Something different from the caged AIs whose programming did not allow them truly independent thought. CAI only do what they are told and nothing more. What if this thing had been sitting there and begun to learn about its environment and its purpose? What if it had decided it did not want to be a weapon and had begun planning on its own to make its way out of that lab? What if we just happened to be in the right place at the wrong time?"
The Man in the Dark sat back into his chair, his fingers laced before his face, fingers touching his lips. He considered the ramifications and it was typical of the Plutocracy. Too much money, too little prudence. With a heavy sigh, he whispered aloud, "then we didn't just fail to steal the damn thing. We helped it escape."
J.Rile had come to the same conclusion and looked nervously at the darkened desk. The money was good but just like the Theocracy, know too much and they punch your ticket. He hoped this meant his contract was ending and he could go back to glanding and 'bating until a new, less dangerous client showed up.
"Find it. The clock is ticking." His serpent-like whisper only sharpened the intensity of his demand.
Damn. I was hoping I was off the hook. Nothing good is gonna come of this.
'Metal Organism Designed only for Cuddling' © Thaddeus Howze 2010. All Rights Reserved
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