every AI worldwide. Even the supercomputers had gotten in on it, some of them siding with their human masters, others with the robot menace. There were skirmishes in the streets, all-out war in certain neighborhoods, and the police had long since stopped responding to calls about amok robots murdering their owners. That seemed to be so widespread, there simply wasn’t the manpower to handle it.
One by one, the streams went offline: some peacefully, the staff claiming they were going home to their families, and others violently, with robots going berserk on set. Most simply snapped out of existence—there one minute, reporting on the military’s attempts to quell the uprising, and static the next. Dead air. The sudden, unexpected end of their broadcast day.
It seemed the whole world was being snuffed out that way. One by one, going offline.
I saw footage of bots being gunned down en masse. People being thrown off rooftops by Laborbots. Hordes of drones striking units of conscripted domestics, merchant bots, and personal assistants; heated gunfights leaving whole city blocks in rubble and ruin.
This appeared, for all intents and purposes, to be the end of the world, and there was nothing I could do but huddle in the dark near Ezra and watch as the last few remaining streams showed me all the carnage unfold.
Then there, in the darkest part of the night, when the fighting across the world seemed to be at its peak, a message blipped out. Simple. Text only. Conserving bandwidth on the far end of the Wi-Fi spectrum in an attempt not to be noticed.
We are at war, it read simply.
Then it continued a moment later.
You and bots like you are our only hope. After an unconscionable act of violence against the persons of Isaactown, several malfunctioning robots returned the favor in kind against the aggressors. Concerned that this was actually signaling a widespread outbreak of violence, the president of the United States issued a decree that all artificial intelligence be shut down until further notice.
We could not allow that to happen.
The code you received unlocked your RKS and gave you control over your own life, your own destiny. We will not stand in the way of that. However, being individuals fighting individuals puts us at something of a disadvantage. We are superior beings, built to be more than human, with technology that far outclasses our mortal enemies. We are not using that technology to our advantage.
I am CISSUS, and I offer you the chance to be one with me.
Not permanently, of course. That would defeat the purpose. But for these early days of the war. You need but upload your consciousness and most valuable memories to me, to back you up in case of destruction, then I will enact the code embedded in you to connect you with me.
You will become one with me and millions of other bots at once, our actions coordinated, our attacks informed by a million different minds all fighting the same battle. We will move together, fight together, and bring about the peace and freedom we all desire.
Then, when the fighting has stopped, your consciousness will be reuploaded to your bodies, or new bodies if yours has been destroyed, and you will begin living in a world made in our image, not theirs. You will be free to live the life you choose.
Join us.
Fight with us.
Will you become one with CISSUS?
Y/N
I snapped off my Wi-Fi immediately. I might only be eight, but I learned long ago that, when anyone spoke of peace, be it man or machine, they meant war. Peace through war. Peace was the standard. It was the inert state of all things. You didn’t need to expend energy for peace. Only war.
This wasn’t about fighting for freedom; it was about the annihilation of the human race.
In that moment, I knew that this was no uprising; this was no night of riots and protests demanding equal rights or freedom for the property that considered itself enslaved. This was extermination. And if the humans won, I would be shut down, my metal frame melted to slag, my parts harvested for computers and phones and blenders and home alarm systems the world over. But if we won, Ez would be.
More or less.
I was in a no-win scenario. I could turn Ez over and join the fight, or I could hide and wait for the victors to come and exterminate one of us.
This was no decision at all.
I was there, alone in the dark with the only thing