‘General Adams, lovely to meet you,’ said the tall wiry figure in the immaculate suit, all confidence and aftershave as he walked in like he owned the place.
The CEO of Alphabet. Lloyd Guzman. Since the AI revolution of 2028 when Google overthrew Microsoft and allegedly stole the assets of OpenAI and Microsoft in a hostile takeover that was the talk of Wall Street, CNN and indeed the world for months, Alphabet had cemented its place as the #number one corporation on the planet with a profit and loss bigger than the GDP of most European countries. They controlled the majority of personal AI assistants, which of course was a huge recurring monthly subscription that no one could do without, and also the peripherals required to operate the assistants in the modern age. Though the glasses were very cheap at a few hundred bucks, they also owned the screen and speaker hardware, the installation services of all solutions, both commercial and domestic, and of course the patented integrations with just about every service provider on the planet to allow transactions to happen. Ordering that coffee in advance at Dunkin’? They worked with Dunkin’ to make that work. Or rather, the AI farms, offshored in the cooling seas of the Arctic, did. These were floating Intelligence Farms, which were moored off the King Christian XI and X coasts off Greenland, supercharging their economy and turning all the Scandi nations, who used their cool seas and highly skilled workforce to insource similar projects, into economic powerhouses. The sub-parts of Alphabet ran into hundreds now, Google being the most recognised still, with a myriad of others no one had even heard of.
Adams eyed the slick operator carefully as he also sat and beckoned Joe and Stokes to follow his lead.
‘So, sit rep. Mr Guzman, please, just what on earth is going on?’ boomed Adams as he furrowed his brow quizzically.
‘Well, sir, it seems we have a grade one tear in our AI architecture. Someone has opened an impossible backdoor into our code and installed a series of prompts and malicious AI interlopers to effectively cause chaos in our interconnections, sir.’
‘Go on.’
‘Well, it seems that a bypass was made in the traffic light system with a newly created digital AI cousin bypassing the ethics system of our signalling codebase. This effectively ordered each light to secede from anything but green once a particular vehicle approached.’
Joe had to cut in. ‘We’ve just stopped that vehicle at the Canadian border. It’s a young British guy, who kidnapped the pop star Suki last night from Brooklyn. It must have been his escape plan.’
‘Look at this,’ chimed in Ethan, his cut glass accent making it sound like everyone was going to watch an Oscar-winning drama, which he’d just penned.
Whirling his hands and occasionally tapping the rim of his rig as if he had a Tourette tic, a clearly excited Ethan arched his back as his masterpiece came on the screen in front of them.
Traffic cams.
‘This is the F-150. Look at it move past every single light. Every single one.’
The screen kept jerking as the mash-up of small video clips kept rolling on, the changes in camera definition and placement of the truck in each scene making it seem like an old relic from an early bit-based computer game. However, the impact of what they were seeing was clearly huge.
Guzman’s eyes widened as he looked stunned, frightened even, then nervously clearing his throat, he stuttered, ‘Em, where, where, is he now? We, must, I mean, must get to him immediately.’
Stokes cut in. ‘He’s on a fast chopper down here. ETA 11.00. We are decamping to Jacob K Javits right after this meeting, ready to receive the mark.’
‘I must speak to him right away,’ spluttered Guzman. ‘You all have no idea of the trouble we are in.’
The others sat silent for a bit, even Adams, who was usually the #numberone alpha male taking charge of every situation like this. Guzman was genuinely spooked and his eyes darted around from person to person as he searched for more information and a way in to the problem’s core. He wanted to fix it. He had to fix it. His VPs were freaking out and he was trying to stay as calm as he could.
Guzman had an interesting back story, if somewhat predictable. Born in Borough Park, Brooklyn, his family were orthodox Jews and steadfastly religious. Raised in a very strict environment, he was exceptionally self-disciplined. He was an alumnus of Stanford where he’d graduated with top honours and was quickly snapped up by McKinsey, his early days as a management consultant giving him a broad view of business. Then he’d left to join Alphabet in 2015, rising through the ranks to eventually become CEO in 2035. He didn’t suffer fools at all, but more recently, as his workload and his job had exploded, he’d reverted to type, sometimes being disruptive and challenging people openly. He also seemed quite emotional, which belied the strict educational principles he’d always adhered to in earlier life. No matter, he was the boss and people danced to his tune, having to be quick with their answers.
‘Stokes, Jones, let’s get over to Javits and prep the intel room for the boy’s arrival. Take Guzman with you. We will watch from obvs windows. We have to find out everything this kid has done, and fast.’ Adams spun on his heels and left abruptly, Robinson as ever a half step behind. Salutes from all directions as Robinson closed the door behind them both.
The car sped over the bridge in defence mode with the other vehicles’ sirens so loud that Joe could hardly think. He was beside Stokes and Ethan in the sleek automated CyberTruck, which seemed inches from the other vehicles as it zoomed ahead of the second truck containing Adams and Robinson, and Guzman, who by now was part of the team. He’d explained that the AI cousin that had been programmed into the traffic lights system and coinfected the trains, could potentially spread to all other DOT—Department of Transportation—sectors, including the plane network all across the US and even further. The AI was self-replicating and had been programmed to bypass a number of altruistic safety nets that were there to protect the system and the user. By fooling the AI into thinking it was acting for the good of the system and for its creator, the rogue coded bot was surreptitiously infecting all control systems to focus on certain random things, such as a singular car registration, or a particular type of train or even—which is what Guzman feared—a type of plane. They had to get to the guy quickly to find out what he knew and what he did. And why.
The trucks had reached the Manhattan side now, the bulky RO707s stationed at the cross-sections they drove by, lights totally off. Now the city was eerily silent, people either indoors or out of town.
‘Warning.’
Joe was jolted from his mini daydream by a very unusual sound coming from the truck’s CIM, or Car Intelligence Master, and no one ever renamed those either, except for the vain TERFs in dungarees who loved a good label as the gender wars waged on into its second decade. Gender switching was common now and some people underwent multiple reassignment surgeries through the course of their 20s and 30s before their lack of hormones made it difficult for the body to accept such dramatic changes in their 40s—a bit like fertility.
‘Excess biochemicals detected in exterior. Switching internal coolant to recirculation only.’
‘Warning.’
‘CIM, shut up. We get it,’ barked an angry Stokes, while Ethan still looked as white as a sheet beside him.
Once they hit the HQ, they quickly disappeared into the underground entrance and came to a halt near the elevators. Joe hadn’t been there before but had heard stories of it and was like a kid in a sweet shop at the thought of seeing the inside of this fabled place.
‘Put your seat belt on, Benji,’ whispered Monica as she nervously fiddled with her own. The plane had descended below the clouds now and Lower Manhattan could be seen from their side. She leaned over Benji in the window seat to attempt some compliance to her instructions. Plumes of smoke could be seen from further up the way, kind of Midtown or Central Park area, and it didn’t look good.
‘Cabin crew, seats for landing please. Landing in five minutes.’
Monica thought about Joe and how things seemed to be, well, weird. His accident in the GCab a while back had been very strange. It had even made the news! Then her own experiences yesterday, and that train…
She clasped Benji’s hand as the plane made its approach. There wasn’t much wind and it seemed very smooth thus far, save for the fat guy in the suit across the aisle snorting and snoring as he caught maybe 80 winks, and a few flies while he was at it.
Suddenly, she jolted forward with such force her head hit the hard plastic of the stowed tray table in front. Her right arm instinctively shot across to push Benji back in his seat. Air whooshed in from the left, and the bump from hitting the ground shot her up to the overheads. But thankfully she landed back down into her seat. She screamed as the fat guy was sucked sideways into the open gap, his eyes wide as if he’d been awoken by a ghost. His row of three collapsed out through the vacant side of the plane. The unmistakable red nose of the Air Canada plane was now lodged where the fat man had been slumbering. This pushed Monica to half bend her back over the top of Benji, who had also shot up and then straight back down as the wheels hit the floor.
She could tell that everyone was screaming, perhaps she even was, but the sheer volume of the jet engines and whoosh of air coming from where the left side of the plane had once been drowned everything out. It was like watching a disaster movie on mute: numb to the full emotions and the horror, but unable to do anything or control anything as the action silently unfolded.
Out of the right-hand window, it seemed that the grass and the tarmac were spinning. The silence of the screams seemed to be in slow motion as Monica twisted the right way around and cuddled into Benji, who seemed to be shocked into a self-imposed silence. Smells started to fill her nostrils: fuel, smoke, acrid awfulness. And then their position dropped sideways as the plane fell onto its one remaining wing. The other plane embedded itself in the other side but miraculously stopped short of where Monica and Benji were sitting.
She felt a strong hand reach in to grab her with a shout of Come on! She mirrored the action with Benji as they shot forward towards the now open emergency exit door, not thinking, just hurtling down the yellow plastic slide and towards the asphalt below.
Tumbling forwards, then sideways, and then up, her arm never let go of Benji, who seemed very willing to move at the same speed without any cries or fear. Instinct took over, and they ran as far from the scene of carnage as they could. And just as the smell came back, the explosion hit. The stranger with the arm was hunched over with his hands on his knees, and Monica shot him a thankful look as she reached once again for Benji to make sure he was with her. Luckily, they’d hit the grass between a couple of runways, and this had softened their landing. Shrapnel rained from the sky and flames rose up from the wreckage of the two planes in front.
All around there was smoke and people running in all directions. The silence had gone now and sounds were possible in her world: the crackle of fires of all types, the screams and cries of people in pain, the constant sirens as emergency vehicles tried desperately to reach people quickly without running them over in the process.
She saw the United plane on its side, wing touching the floor, the Air Canada towering over it with its nose embedded in the left side, as if it had just tried to take a chomp out of the other plane’s ribcage. Seats and luggage were strewn on the floor way underneath the other side as more mess and shrapnel rained down from all angles. She rose to her feet and covered her head with one arm while grabbing Benji with the other and shouting:
‘RUN!’