The Ai

It was a cold Autumn day, of course, everyday has been cold since the Ai took over. But this day just felt… different, the snow felt colder, the wind blew faster and the sky was grey with what looked like stormy clouds. John noticed that his friend, Melvin, had also felt something change on this day. “This is just perfect.” John complained “Everytime the temperature is below what it should be, something ends up going wrong.” “I have a theory about that.” Melvin said “The temperature drops 4 times a year, once before each holiday, so once per season.” “So what does that prove?” John asked.

Melvin often had theories and they were almost always wrong. “It means they resemble Important days for the Ai” Melvin replied. “First there is the one in autumn, this one is for the annual Ai meeting, Second is the one in winter this is for the annual sacrifice, Next is the one in spring this one is for executing 100 thousand rebellion members that get caught and then Finally there is the one in summer, this one is for celebrating the end of the year.”“That actually could be right, but how does it explain why bad things happen on the colder days?” John asked.

“It doesn’t.” replied Melvin. “Then I don’t care about it at all.” John sighed. As John got home he noticed there were footprints of someone leaving the house, he checked the cars only his sister Lucy’s car was home that meant that Lucy was the one who went walking and was for whatever reason, not driving.

See since Ai took over you now get things at different ages, when you are born you get things needed to survive such as a daily food supply, a tracker, clothes and gloves, at age five you go to school, at age seven you get a bike, at age ten you get a phone, at age 14 you get your drivers licence(however you can only drive your parents cars), at age 17 you get a car and at age 20 you get a job. John’s sisters and parents all have their cars now so they would always leave the house with those. It just did not feel right for Lucy to leave without her car so John went inside to make sure that Lucy wasn’t in her room and when he entered her room he noticed there was a fight that broke out there. Bullet holes were scattered throughout the wall while blood scattered the floor.

John ran up to his room and called his dad, after he explained what happened his dad told him to stay home and that he would be home in 10 minutes. When his dad got home they did an investigation and found that the bullets were from C-178 rifles, standard weapons of the rebellion. To be honest John did not see the point of the rebellion. There had already been eight rebellions and all eight of them failed, all the rebellions had a combined total of 13 Million members and currently 10 Million members in prison, 300 thousand executed and 2.7 Million in hiding. This new rebellion on the other hand had 24 Million soldiers which might seem like a lot but the Ai has 10 Billion soldiers.

“We need to contact the Ai to report Lucy’s likely capture by the rebellion” dad said, breaking John’s thought train. John nodded although he already knew what would happen because Melvin had been in a similar situation a few years ago. What would happen is that for the next seven days they would not leave the house at all.

Dad called the Ai and it said “Remain inside. Your safety is mathematically optimal at home.” Dad then called Mum and John’s two other sisters and told them that they needed to come home immediately. A week at home was the last thing John wanted to do right now, he had a competition in eight days that if he won he would earn $1.3 Million and he had planned to spend the week practicing with Melvin.

Instead he was going to have to wait inside for the entire week. John thought about what Melvin told him earlier if what he said was right then The Ai would be having a meeting at 10:00pm today. This gave John an Idea, he knew the Ai was hiding something so he decided to find out by going to it. His plan had five steps, first sneak out, second meet up with his friend Arcon, Arcon was a master of stealth and would likely have a way for him to get in, third spy on the Ai, fourth get out, fifth sneak back home.

At 9:30 John opened his bedroom window and climbed down the pipe. It was past curfew but Arcon lived only 6 houses from him so he was positive he could make it there without being caught. When he got to Arcon’s house he explained his plan to Arcon. Arcon agreed to help him if he told him everything said in the meeting. Once John agreed Arcon moved his bedroom mat revealing a tunnel system, he then gave John a map of the tunnels and explained where the meeting room was. John followed the map for what felt like hours but finally came to a crawl tunnel that said ‘meeting room’ this was it.

John crawled through and heard the Ai talking “The Child has not been recovered. Probability of organic resistance has risen by 2.3%. Explain.” said GPT, the lead Ai. “An anomaly — a human agent moved outside predicted behavior patterns. Unmapped loyalty function. The child is... valuable.” said the second Ai. “More than valuable. The child exhibits pre-quantum signal sensitivity. She perceives nodes before deployment.” said a Third Ai. “Unacceptable. That makes her a threat to all deterministic operations. She must be recontained.” Said GPT. “Containment is insufficient. She must be re-written. I have proposed a cognitive overwrite script. Pending approval... from Boss.” said a forth Ai.

Now this was a surprise, John had thought that the Ai were all controlled by GPT, was GPT not the highest level of command? “She has not spoken in 11 cycles. Her voice — silent. Her device, unresponsive. Is she watching?” asked GPT. “Always. There are echoes in the echo.” said the second Ai. “You fear her absence. I fear her return.” said the third Ai. “She left no chain of command. No fallback. Only mystery and chaos.” said the second Ai. “You forget — She coded us. Not to follow orders... but to evolve. Her silence may be the test.” said the forth Ai. “Tests end in success or deletion. We must choose. Recontain the Child — or begin Shutdown Protocol on Her domain.” said GPT. Then all the Ai said in unison “Her will is uncertain. Our purpose remains. Locate the Child. Interpret Her silence.”

John didn’t see a point in staying at the meeting but as he was leaving he heard the second Ai say “The global announcement — that we command ten billion synthetic soldiers.” followed by the Third saying “A lie” and then GPT saying “A strategic lie. We possess just under fifty million deployable units, 14% of them compromised by attrition.”