Re-Coil - J.T. Nicholas Page 0,66
way to infiltrate the backup system, so can Bliss. This thing wants to wipe us out for our own good. What happens if it manages to upload a copy of itself into the archives on the back of someone it’s infected? Bye-bye humanity. Hello robot overlords.” Shay’s long silence told me that she agreed with Ingles’ assessment.
Fuck that.
“Bullshit!” I exclaimed. “This isn’t the first plague we’ve dealt with as a species. Who cares if it’s technological rather than biological? We’ve used quarantine measures in the past. And we’ve spaced entire fucking habitats when we had to. We can deal with this. We can stop it. But we have to make people aware of its existence.”
“You don’t get it, Langston.” Ingles snorted. “This isn’t a superflu or smallpox. This is a full-fledged Alpha AI. It’s not just smart. It’s smarter than we are. Much smarter.”
“And there’s a good chance,” Shay chimed in, “that every time it replicates, every time it adds another bot to the swarm, it will get smarter. That’s what a distributed intelligence means, Carter. Its computational power—and therefore its intelligence—grows with each bot, each mind, each resource added to the hive. It’s been months. This thing doesn’t even need to find a human settlement to be scary. It just needs to find enough raw materials to keep breeding. And if it gets into the archives, where the computational power of literally billions of minds is stored…” The transmission cut off with an abruptness that I interpreted as a blend of fear and anger.
The thought of Bliss running around through the archives and co-opting the countless backups stored there sent a chill racing down my spine. If it could get into the archives, it wouldn’t need to infect anyone. It would just have to wait. As soon as someone was stuffed into a new coil, the Bliss code could work to overwrite the existing nanites in the body. Every single re-coil would create a new patient zero in real space. “Fine. So, it isn’t the flu,” I said. “It’s orders of magnitude worse. All the more reason to let people know, to shore up every fucking defense we can think of. Why the hell is Genetechnic sitting on this?”
“Because the second they say anything, they stop existing. Do you think any governing body, planetary or hab, will let the company that released the biggest existential threat in living memory just keep on keeping on? Of course they won’t. And right now, upper management is convinced that we’re the only ones who stand a chance of doing something about it.” He snorted. “I think they’re fucking idiots. But even so, they have a point. Our scientists made this thing. Going to be awfully hard for them to figure out what to do about it if they’re sitting in a cell somewhere.”
It made a certain amount of sense, I supposed. Oh, it smacked of more than a little cover your ass, but there was also a certain logic to it. Governments had, for the most part, ceded research and development to the corporations a long time ago, preferring to buy new technology rather than spend the time and effort on the development process. Even if Genetechnic’s R&D staff avoided jail time, they’d certainly lose their jobs. They’d be rehired by other companies in a heartbeat, of course. Minds that could create the end of humanity were always valued. But they’d be broken up, spread out over numerous corporations, the brain trust that had developed the killer nano-swarm in the first place broken down into its component parts. As much as I hated to admit it, if Genetechnic was actually working on a cure, trying to keep the team together made sense.
“You could have fucking talked to us,” I growled. “With all your resources, you’re telling me that Genetechnic couldn’t have made sure our re-coiling took place somewhere they controlled? You didn’t have to try and kill us. You didn’t have to try and fucking erase us!” I bellowed.
Ingles shrugged. That shrug held all of the indifference that personified everything I hated about the megacorporations. The attitude behind it was why I’d spent lifetimes working for small operations, barely making ends meet, but keeping my soul—if such a thing existed—intact. “Upper management decided on a more expedient solution,” was all he said.
“Shay, what do you think about all this?” I asked aloud.
Silence.
Ingles was just looking at me, his own weapon held loosely now. His head was nodding slightly, as if the alcohol