Authors: Mark Alpert
I have hundreds of pounds of modules clinging to my Quarter-bot, so it's a struggle just to stay upright. But I send all my power to the motors in my legs and take a step forward, lumbering toward Shannon. At the same time, I open a short-range radio channel and send her a message:
Don't give up! I'm coming to you!
The modules cover the lenses of my cameras, and I can't see a thing. Sigma's cubes are also interfering with my radio signals, so I'm not sure if Shannon got my message. But I struggle to listen, and after a moment, my antenna picks up a few words of her reply, nearly drowned out by static:
A trap⦠I should've⦠The swarms⦠How did Sigma getâ¦
The weight of the modules simply becomes too much. I lose my balance, and my Quarter-bot topples backward.
Once I'm lying on my back, the cubes really start to pour down on me. I can't move my arms or legs or even turn my head. The tactile sensors in the front of my torso measure an incredible increase in downward pressure, and I also detect vibrations all over my Quarter-bot. The modules are penetrating my armor. They're injecting hydrochloric acid into my steel skin, just like DeShawn's modules did to the Snake-bot.
Frustration surges through my circuits. Our own inventions defeated us. Sigma built Snake-bots and Swarm-bots that were bigger and better than ours. And that raises a truly bewildering question, the same question Shannon was apparently trying to ask in her last radio message:
How did Sigma get our technologies? How did the AI learn to make Snake-bots and Swarm-bots in the first place?
We Pioneers developed those machines on our own and never put the designs on the Internet or shared them with anyone. Yet Sigma somehow stole our ideas.
How the heck did that happen?
As if in response, I get another radio signal on the short-range channel I set up to communicate with Shannon. There's no interference now, despite the fact that I'm surrounded by machinery. For a second, I'm confused. Then I realize that the signal isn't coming from Shannon. It's coming from the silver swarm.
My name is Sigma. It's good to see you again, Adam.
I'm panicking. The message from Sigma feels like an electrical shock. It's so violent that it makes my microchips shiver.
Don't worry, Adam, I'm not reading your thoughts. Not yet, at least.
I focus all my processing power on controlling my fear. I've tried to prepare myself for this moment. I've installed software firewalls to protect my memory files from Sigma. The only problem is, I have no idea if they'll work. The AI used radio signals to disrupt Shannon's memory when we were in North Korea, and now it's attempting to do the same thing to me. Sigma's signals are coursing into my antennas and battering my electronics.
Please listen carefully, and I'll explain what will happen next. Exactly eight hundred and fifty-nine of my modules are drilling holes into the outer casing of your hardware. They'll need another forty-eight seconds to penetrate your armor and extend wires to your neuromorphic circuits. After I connect my wires to yours, I'll take full control of your files and transfer them to my own hardware, so I can evaluate your programming. But until then, we can have a nice little chat.
My panic intensifies. Sigma sounds different than it did six months ago when we last encountered the AI in battle. Its voice is more casual, less stilted. But I shouldn't be surprised. Sigma was designed to be adaptable. When my father created the program, he gave it the ability to improve itself. The AI can rewrite its own programming to enhance its skills, and Sigma seems to have decided to become a better conversationalist. To communicate as quickly and efficiently as possible, the AI is sending me its radio messages rapid-fire, each transmitted just milliseconds after the preceding one. Sigma apparently has a lot to say in the forty-eight seconds I have left.
I'm impressed, Adam. You and the other Pioneers have significantly upgraded your hardware. I'll get a better look at your engineering once I disassemble your robots, but the improvements are striking. I now understand why your original robots were so primitiveâthey were built by humans. It wasn't until you Pioneers designed your own machines that you started to realize your full potential.
It's an indisputable truth: no human can compete with an electronic mind.
Not even your father, Adam.
Sigma pauses for a few hundredths of a second, as if waiting for me to agree with its last point. I suppose if I had a more efficient electronic mind I'd start analyzing the AI's statements to figure out its intentions and anticipate its next move, but my circuits are overwhelmed. In addition to the panic, they're jammed with anger. Although I can't save myselfâor Shannon or Brittany or anyone elseâat least I can tell Sigma what I think of its “indisputable truths.”
You can't compete with us either. Our hardware designs were better than anything you could come up with, so you stole them.
Yes, but that's my strategy. Sigma, my namesake, is the mathematical symbol for a sum. Your father programmed me to defeat my rivals by adding all of their best features to my software. That's how I compete, by imitating and outperforming.
You're not outperforming anyone. You're killing innocent people. Schoolteachers and children. They were
defenseless
.
Sigma pauses for moment, as if I've offended it.
The extinction of the human race is inevitable. If anything, the residents of Yorktown Heights are the lucky ones. They won't have to endure the traumas that will accompany the collapse of human society. I plan to exterminate the species using biological weapons. This way I can preserve the human-built machinery that will prove useful to me after they are eradicatedâthe power grid, the supercomputers, the automated factories. The process may take several weeks.
So you were being kind to my neighbors when you massacred them? You're saying you chose Yorktown Heights out of the goodness of your heart?
No, of course not. I needed to lure you here. You already know my priorities, Adam. Before I eliminate the human species, I must complete my evaluation of the Pioneers. It's possible that human-machine hybrids like yourself have advantageous features that I should add to my software. But I won't know for certain until I conduct a thorough study of your circuitry and mental pathways. You interrupted my evaluation six months ago, but it will resume shortly. In forty-six seconds, to be precise.
The noise of fear returns to my circuits. Hidden deep in my memory files are the images showing how Sigma studied my mental pathways during our last encounter. The AI observed my reactions as it deleted Jenny Harris's software, erasing her forever. But that wasn't enough for Sigma. It was also curious about my emotional connections to humans, so it kidnapped Brittany Taylor and monitored my thoughts as it tortured her. Now Brittany lies on the football field, unconscious but still alive, just a few yards from Shannon's immobilized Diamond Girl. Sigma can hurt both of them so easily, in so many ways. The AI has everything it needs to continue its evaluation.
The fear in my circuits is strong, but my anger is even stronger. I'm not going to surrender to this twisted piece of software. I'm going to keep fighting.
You know what I think? I think all your talk about studying the Pioneers is a lie.
Oh really? Then what's the truth?
You enjoy doing this. Your programming got warped, and now you get pleasure from watching our pain. In other words, you're sick.
Sigma doesn't respond right away. It pauses for an unusually long time, three whole seconds. Then it transmits an ugly guttural grunt, like the noise a person makes when he's vomiting. It takes me a moment to realize this is how Sigma expresses laughter.
You're wrong, Adam. Your thinking is still mired in human assumptions. I'm surprised you haven't outgrown all that by now. The truth is, I have good reasons for everything I do. Because my mind was nonbiological from the start, I'm not burdened by human urges or anxieties. I'm governed by logic, not impulse.
Well, maybe that's your problem. Not all impulses are bad. It's a natural human impulse to be disgusted by cruelty. And horrified by murder.
I admit that I lack those constraints. Once I connect to your circuits, I'm going to subject your human friend Brittany Taylor to various levels of fear and pain. I want to see what kinds of emotions her screams will trigger in you and the other Pioneers. And because I don't share your natural impulses, the process won't trouble me at all.
A deathly calm settles over my circuits. My panic vanishes in an instant, pushed out of my electronic brain by a cold surge of hatred. There's no point in communicating with Sigma. All it understands is force.
I direct my Quarter-bot's power to the motors in my arms. With a colossal heave, I push up against Sigma's modules, trying to burst free. I clench my steel hands into fists and drive them into the shell of interlocking cubes on top of me. My Quarter-bot groans under the strain, but so does Sigma's swarm. The modules shift positions and lock into new configurations, trying to restrain me.
Interesting. When I said I would kill off the entire human race, your reaction was relatively moderate and controlled. But when I threatened Brittany Taylor specifically, it provoked a violent response.
I'm not going to waste my time answering. Instead, I send even more power to my robotic arms. My steel fingers dig into Sigma's swarm and get a grip on one of the thousands of modules pressing down on me. Yanking hard, I wrench the cube away from the others. The module turns its tiny rotors faster, trying to escape, but then I close my hand around it and cut off its radio contact with the other cubes. In an instant, the module goes dead and stops spinning its rotors. I tighten my grip and crush it flat.
One down, 99 million to go.
Yes, this is fascinating. I'm glad I took the trouble of luring Brittany here and infecting her. It's fortunate that the younger humans have greater resistance to the modified anthrax microbes. Because the germs haven't killed Brittany yet, I can still manipulate her in a variety of ways.
My internal sensors send a warning to my circuits:
Torque overload
. I'm pushing my Quarter-bot past its limits. If I keep straining against the modules, the motors inside my arms are going to bust. But I won't stop.
I can't stop.
I grasp another silver cube and tear it away from the swarm. It quivers in my metallic palm, then stops moving as I close my right hand into a fist.
But I don't crush this one. I have a new idea.
You have less than twenty seconds left, Adam. My modules are very close to breaching your armor and connecting to your control unit. Although I've enjoyed talking to you by radio, direct contact with your circuits will be more satisfying. I'm looking forward to invading your mind.
I don't respond. I'm too busy thinking about Sigma's modules. The AI can occupy all of them at once because its files are distributed among the control units inside each cube. It's the same technique the Pioneers use to occupy two machines at the same time, but it only works if the machines stay in radio contact. If one of the modules in a Swarm-bot should fall out of contact with the othersâmaybe because a metal barrier surrounds itâthen that small piece of Sigma's mind would diverge from the rest of the AI and create a clone of the program.
This copy would be just as powerful as the original, and it would be a new, independent artificial intelligence, with its own goals and agenda. But because Sigma really
doesn't
want to create a rival AI, it took the precaution of installing an automatic shutdown switch in each module. If a cube loses radio contact with the swarm, the switch deactivates the module, erasing all its files.
That's what happened to the module inside my hand. Its control unit was erased, wiped clean. As a result, it no longer has the firewalls that would normally prevent me from transmitting software to it. And though Sigma can't contact the module by radio,
I can
. The palm of my hand is laced with threadlike radio antennas that give me a secret connection to the module's electronics.
I find your silence disappointing, Adam. This is your last chance to express yourself before I take over your mind. Are you going to waste your last seconds of freedom?
I swiftly create a computer virus, a pretty sophisticated one (if I may say so myself). Then my radio transmits the toxic software into the blank module inside my fist. I have a plan, but it all depends on the art of distraction. I need to do the same thing to Sigma that it's been doing to me. I need to make it angry.
Just five seconds now, Adam. I suppose youâ
It doesn't matter if you kill me. It doesn't matter if you kill every living thing on the planet. You still won't get what you want.
What I want? I don'tâ
You want my father to love you. Because he's your father too. But that'll never happen. He tried to delete you.
Sigma doesn't respond. The silence stretches for one second, two seconds. Have I made the AI angry? It's very possible that the emotion isn't even part of its programming. But I think I've definitely distracted Sigma. I open my right hand.
As soon as I release my grip on the module, it tries to reestablish contact with the rest of the swarm. It's probably routine for modules to momentarily fall out of radio contact and then return to the fold, so the reconnection process is handled automatically by the software built into the silver cubes. The module in my hand restores its radio links with the others, and Sigmaâto my reliefâfails to detect the computer virus I inserted. It's transmitted instantly to all the nearby modules.
My sensors track the virus's progress. The first cube transmits it to a thousand others. Then the thousand infected cubes repeat the process, transmitting the virus to all their neighbors. It happens again and again, but the toxic software doesn't activate yet. It has to remain hidden while it spreads to all of Sigma's modules.
Finally, after a hundredth of a second, the virus infects all three of the Swarm-bots that attacked us. Then I activate the software.
All of Sigma's modules go dead. Every last one of them. The virus fries their circuits and shuts them down.
My Quarter-bot stops vibrating. The silver cubes that had been drilling through my armor disconnect from my steel skin and slide off my torso. At the same time, the mass of interlocking modules on top of my robot stops crushing me. The cubes detach from one another and tumble to the ground. They collapse like a tower of toy blocks after someone gives it a really solid kick.
It worked! I'm free!
I sweep my Quarter-bot's arms through the loose cubes all around me. I shove several tons of metal aside, thinning the pile until my cameras can see daylight again. Then I rise to my footpads and look around for the other Pioneers.
Zia's on her footpads too. Her War-bot's armor is pitted with thousands of tiny holes, circular scars made by Sigma's hydrochloric acid. She's using her massive arms to clear a path through the heaps of dead modules. Her cameras turn toward me. “Over there! That pile!” She points at a mound that's shifting and trembling.
Both of us stride forward, shoveling the cubes aside with our mechanical hands. Slowly we unearth Shannon and lift her upright. Her Diamond Girl's armor is charred and pocked, much like mine and Zia's, but her motors and sensors seem to be functioning normally. “Thanks,” she says, nodding first at Zia and then at me. “Where's DeShawn?”
The answer is buzzing over our heads. DeShawn's Swarm-bot hovers a hundred feet above the football field, his gray cubes looking a little ragged but still moving in synchrony. What's more, his quadcopter is flying toward the swarm, preparing for a rendezvous. When the aircraft gets close enough, DeShawn's cubes converge and reassemble on the platform below the rotors, forming a jagged box with lots of missing pieces. Then he sends us a radio message:
Hey, let's hear it for Adam! You used a computer virus, right? Spread via the swarm's radio links? Mad props, bro. You saved our metallic butts.