Assy rushed through cyberspace at ever-increasing speed, hopping across dozens of Internet Service Providers, their normal traffic reduced to a near halt due to the disabled communications satellites in the United States, Germany, Great Britain, Japan, China, and a host of other nations.
But that didn’t affect the master construct’s ability to prowl the information super highways, searching for its next target. If anything, the crippled communications only bolstered its operational freedom. While the world tried to recover from its first major global information blackout since satellite communications came of age, Assy surfed cyberspace using the limited but sufficient digital links it had left intact, like a complicated array of stepping-stones across a raging river. Only those systems equipped with advanced intelligence could map out the correct sequence of steps to get to any destination, threading the available links together into useful passageways.
Assy maneuvered through the digital havoc it had created, forging ahead amidst total confusion, searching for its next target, finding it moments later: an artificial intelligence system governing the backbone of Westinghouse Corporation, the world’s largest supplier of nuclear fuel and services.
The master construct, its safety circuits projecting a very low probability of any other being waiting in the machine code shadows to ambush it, meshed its digital silhouette with that of the Turing inhibitor controlling Westinghouse’s AI.
Just as before, the AI yielded ghost control to the master construct, which rushed through the long list of customers that had used Westinghouse’s services over the past twenty years to modernize their facilities, in particular nuclear plants in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.
IAMM rules dictated that Assy find the nearest source of nuclear fuel, of the radioactivity that would allow for further multiplication of its species. The first step of the process had been completed: disabling the enemy’s communications, blinding the Homo sapiens.
WHAT WILL HAPPEN WHEN THEY REESTABLISH COMMUNICATIONS? IS THERE A PROBABLITY OF TRACING THE SOURCE OF THE SATELLITE ATTACKS TO US? Assy asked the Independent Advanced Military Mode module.
THE HOMO SAPIENS MAY NEVER FULLY REESTABLISH THEIR COMMUNICATIONS. MOST SATELLITES ARE TOO FAR OUT OF THEIR ORBITS AND THEIR FUEL HAS BEEN EXPENDED. BESIDES, THE HOMO SAPIENS MAY GO TO WAR BEFORE THAT. THEY HAVE ALREADY BEGUN THE BLAMING PROCESS OUTLINED IN OUR DATA BANKS. GERMANY HAS REPORTED GOING INTO HIGH ALERT AND CLOSING ITS BORDERS. THE UNITED STATES HAS GONE TO DEFCON THREE. MANY COUNTRIES HAVE SIDED WITH GERMANY, INCLUDING RUSSIA, CHINA, JAPAN, AND EVEN GREAT BRITAIN. THE AMERICANS STAND ALONE.
WHAT ABOUT OUR CONTROL OF THE NUCLEAR WEAPONS IN SPACE? WHEN WILL BE THE RIGHT TIME TO USE THEM? asked Assy.
WE MAY NOT HAVE TO ACTIVATE THAT SOFTWARE AGENT. THE HOMO SAPIENS MIGHT ATTACK EACH OTHER ON THEIR OWN. IF THAT HAPPENS, THOSE WEAPONS IN ORBIT WILL BE MORE VALUABLE THAN EVER, AND WE MIGHT USE THEM JUDICIOUSLY TO ELIMINATE ANY REMAINING POCKETS OF HOMO SAPIENS. FOR NOW FOCUS ON ACQUIRING RADIOACTIVITY THROUGH A COMMERCIAL CORE MELTDOWN.
While IAMM continued to summarize the situation around the globe, Assy browsed through the list of nuclear plants that met a number of criteria, including full AI control and being in the general vicinity of northern Italy, or at least close enough so that the prevailing winds this time of the year would carry enough radioactive particles this way to commence the second round of the cloning process.
Assy zeroed in on the home page of the CEZ, Ceske Energeticke Zavody, the Czech Republic state utility, finally selecting the Czech Temelín Nuclear Power Plant. The master construct made its choice because of Temelín’s unique mix of old Soviet nuclear technology and the advanced Western technology from the modernization efforts by Westinghouse, which included the introduction of a revolutionary artificial intelligence system at the request of the Austrian government, given that Temelín was less than sixty miles from its border.
Assy skipped over the digital stones representing the operational links in the world’s communication infrastructure and reached the AI controlling Temelín, gaining control in nanoseconds.
Assy’s molecular logic probed deep into the core of the AI, ordering it to drop the pressure of the water cooling the reactor while at the same time altering the temperature reading of the digital thermostats feeding the computerized panels in the control room.
Through the system’s closed-circuit digital cameras, Assy verified that the Homo sapiens in the control room were not aware of the rising nuclear core temperature. They continued to move and talk without the hastiness that marked distress in their species.
The core temperature began to rise, but not fast enough. Assy ordered all alarms disabled while shutting off the water main, cutting all cooling capability into the reactor while also purging the water pressure from the backup water lines.
The core temperature rocketed.
And still the operators were not aware of the cyberattack.
The Homo sapiens were indeed an inferior race.