Ten minutes later, we were sitting across from each other inside another windowless room, this one actually inside a pod that was suspended on springs, with multilayered walls of steel, carbon fiber, and other materials between us and the outside world. And it had absolutely no outside power or communications connections. In fact, the major had explained that the lights ran on batteries when the room was in lockdown. And we were the ones who got to lock it.
“Okay, this is as good as it gets. We would never know if this was secure or not,” she said to me.
“It’s an actual secure room, pretty expensive to build. I’m going to guess that we are, most likely, pretty private in here,” I said. “So what do I do?”
“That’s ultimately going to be up to you, Ajaya. If you want out of here and away from them, say the word. I’ve already got great leverage, and that doesn’t even include any of the information your friend Harper sent me.”
“You’ve heard from Harper?”
“She contacted me while I was still watching you rush out of Flottercot’s studio on my television. Gave me all kinds of information on the actual architects of Drone Night. Dangerous information. Contacted me again just hours ago to tell me that she knew you had been taken into custody after killing the Spider.”
“Rikki would likely have contacted her after going into the internet,” I guessed. “But is the stuff she gave you the kind of stuff they would kill you for?”
“Absolutely. But she assured me that she has set up fail-safes and dead man switches that will release all of her findings across the whole planet if anything happens to me or her. She thought I might need leverage to get you free.”
“Sarah, this is way, way beyond anything I imagined. I guess I spent most of my time either thinking about how to find and kill Plum Blossom or get that damn bomb out of my neck. This global blowup is so far out of my wheelhouse that it’s practically over the horizon.”
“Well, I wish I could tell you it would work itself out, but we both know it won’t. Not to mention that the damned Spider isn’t really done yet, is it?”
Oddly it was those words that made me calm down. No matter what was going on with the nation, Plum Blossom was still working to kill us all off. My brain started to work again, really fast. From zero to a hundred in seconds flat.
“What? I can see you just thought of something?” she asked.
“It’s just that you’re right. People are going to die. Either a lot of people or all of them. In fact, if Plum Blossom had its shit in order, we’d all be dead already. So if we fight among ourselves and don’t fight back, none of it will matter.”
“What do you mean… that we’d already be dead?”
“Well, I mean nuclear weapons. That’s best end goal for killing us off. I mean, ruining our food supplies and turning off heat in the winter will kill thousands, but to really be effective, nukes are needed.”
She went pale white. Really white. “Could it do that? It couldn’t, right?”
I looked at her and pondered if I should lay out my thoughts or not. Screw it. She deserved to know.
“The CThrees were the most advanced military combat AIs in the Chinese arsenal back in their day. Harper’s mom improved them, and they grew a lot on their own these last ten years, but they had a core coding that was Chinese. So my guess is that when it uploaded itself, it went somewhere in China. Back to the place it was created. Some server farm, some government or corporate network. From there, it would likely start to make copies of itself, send them out to other computers. It’s very powerful, more than a match for most of the AIs in use. Plus it has had COBWEB out there preparing the fields, so to speak. Somewhere out there, it’s spreading itself, like cancer. At some point, it will infect the military, if it hasn’t already. From then on, it might just be a matter of time.”
“Time till what?” she asked, although I think she already knew my answer.
“Time till it gets launch codes.”
She was shaking now. I reached out and touched her hand. “Sarah, listen to me. It’s not over yet. Not by a longshot. Rikki’s out there, and so is Harper. Plus, there have been enormous advances in computing since that AI was made. There are definitely AIs out there that would have no problem kicking Plum Blossom’s ass.”
“W… what can they do?”
“Well, Rikki would likely land in some place he already knew well. Maybe more than one place. He’s almost assuredly doing the same thing as Plum Blossom, copying himself, infecting computers before Plum Blossom can. Also, he’s likely sending out warnings to uninfected systems. Sort of inoculating them.”
“Where would he go?”
“First? He came here… Zone Defense. I mean, I don’t know that for sure, but I’d bet a lot of money on it. Hell, he’s already prepared this place, has been working on it ever since Harper installed him in Unit 19. Actually before that… back when we were trying to teach the Decimator. His access to Zone Defense systems is how we defeated the bomb codes in my neck.”
“Ajaya, wouldn’t they have realized that? Wouldn’t they have locked him out?”
“Oh I’m sure they tried. Probably think they were successful too. But he had weeks to dig in and modify the whole network. Plus it’s a military installation. It’s connected to the rest of the military. It’s been, what? Three, four hours since they snagged me? Hell, he’s all through the US military and probably working on every other government system he can get into. Not to mention Russia.”
“Russia?”
“Rikki’s core coding was Russian. I modified it, and then he self-modified it even more. But again, at its core, the Berkut was a Russian creation. I guarantee that somewhere, somehow, a copy or hundred of him is working away in Russia.”
“So, what? It’s some kind of giant game of Risk?” she asked, eyes wide in disbelief.
“The board game? Yeah, kind of. Actually, that’s not a bad analogy.”
“But is Rikki enough to counter that Chinese horror?”
“Maybe, maybe not. But Rikki has a secret weapon—Harper Wilks. That girl grew up at the knee of the person who programmed the Spiders. And Harper has been linked directly into artificial intelligence systems through her neuroprothesis since not long after she could walk. There are very few programmers anywhere with her innate understanding of the enemy. Plus, slow as they are, Weber and his people will be fighting as well.”
“But not if the country implodes over this whole false flag conspiracy,” she said, the light of realization dawning bright.
“Yeah, exactly. So I think I need to work with them. But not on their terms, but on mine.”
“How?”
“Well, I need you. I need your connections, the experts you know. See, I see three levels to this. One, we need to calm the waters, but from what you’ve told me, there is nothing I could say to convince people to back down. No, we need to put together a team of experts and let them use me as a conduit for change. At least enough change to appease the masses. I know absolutely jack shit about that stuff. Poly-sci is so not my thing.”
The wheels of thought were visibly hard at work behind those deceptive brown eyes. She nodded. “Yeah, I know the right people. And they know others. Hell, half of them already emailed me within the last few hours. But what else?”
“Well, second, we have to make sure the full resources of the US are working to stop COBWEB and Plum Blossom. And we have to alert the rest of the world’s governments as well. Some stuff will be gone already. It’ll have to be cut free. Shut off. There’s going to be pain.”
“Okay, that makes sense,” she said. “What else?”
“Third, we have to prepare.”
“Prepare for what?”
“Survival. Sarah, even if we are completely successful, the human race is about to experience a major dislocation, if not a true extinction event. Our massive world population functions on the point of a needle. Food, energy, medicine, essential supplies are all provided nowadays on a just in time basis. Any disruption of significant magnitude could tip us off that needle. So we need to prepare the species to survive.”
“Holy shit, Ajaya. I thought you said this wasn’t anything you had thought of?”
“This part I have thought of. Extensively. Ever since I sent my family north and my girlfriend left with her own family. Even without Plum Blossom, COBWEB alone could be enough to push us into a point of no return. At least for the way things are now.”
She looked panicky again. “What do I do? I mean, my mom lives alone in the Bronx. What do I do about her? About my wife and myself?”
“Is it just the two of you, and just your mom?”
“Yes.”
“Tell your wife it’s time to take a vacation. Time to visit upstate. Guests of the Gurung family. And bring your mom.”
She frowned at me, completely confused. So I explained what my mom and grandparents had been up to over the last month. What the Johnson clan had been involved with. By the end of it, she was nodding, her immediate fear pushed back from the ledge of panic. She was still scared, as she should have been, but she could function, had a plan of action to follow. We both did.