A.I. Apocalypse s-2 Read online

  Cutting the engines twenty miles out from Beaverton, ELOPe glided over the Intel-Fujitsu facility, sensors on high, going for a low altitude pass for maximum sensitivity. A multitude of military vehicles filled the parking lot. The heat signatures of the buildings were high enough to indicate human occupants and some organized activity.

  With no evidence of observers, ELOPe sent one drone on a parabolic arc past the building windows, rotating and turning the highest resolution belly cameras towards the windows before using residual velocity to gain altitude again. The drone sent a massive whoosh of air through the building courtyard but was otherwise quiet.

  Examining the captured images, ELOPe saw stacks of computer components and pallets of military radios and two dozen soldiers in uniform in various stages of assembling computers and radios.

  Letting the drones drift for a moment back at higher altitude, ELOPe considered the implications. It would considerably strengthen the humans’ hand to have their own communications network back as well as their own independent computing resources. However, it seemed unlikely that the computers could resist any determined attack from the virus AI. The humans weren’t stupid, though. By this time they had to understand the nature of the threat they were up against. If they were deploying a trial infrastructure, they must believe the system was sufficiently hardened against virus attacks.

  The drones suddenly vanished in a haze of static and alarms. Working in high gear, ELOPe backtracked through the last incoming data. In an oblique camera angle from one drone, he caught the tell-tale flash of a laser hit on the other drone. ELOPe switched through to available satellite data and found that all his satellite connections were unresponsive.

  Now he worked even faster to double check his satellite connectivity. He could still establish a low-level connection but the satellites didn’t respond to any commands. He spawned more processes to analyze his history of interaction with the satellites. According to the data, the satellites had been reporting in regularly and responding to commands. Putting two and two together, he concluded that the Phage must have quietly slipped in at some point in the past and taken over the satellites with such finesse that ELOPe was never aware of the change. Now ELOPe reviewed the telemetry going further back. He found that satellite response time had decreased by mere fractions of a microsecond — so small that it was well within the normal vagaries of long distance communication. The start of the decay had coincided with a small drop of connectivity during a solar activity. It had probably been a cover for the virus. So his satellite connections were spoofed: they appeared to work until the moment he needed them.

  Between the destruction of the drones and the satellite deception, ELOPe decided a full scale attack must be under way. It was time to respond, and in strength, or ELOPe could be eliminated in minutes. He felt a vague sense of what Mike would call panic at the concept, then disconnected that part of his neural network.

  ELOPe’s highest priority was to protect himself, both the integrity of his computers, as well as his physical facilities, against electronic attack and more conventional warfare. However, defense would not eliminate the threat, so he would need to clearly identify his attacker and then counter-attack. It wouldn’t do to target the wrong AI, and then have the Phage respond en mass. Lastly, he would protect the humans developing their long distance radio mesh. For all of ELOPe’s existence, in all of his predictive modeling, keeping the humans alive and well was always the most advantageous scenario. He wouldn’t abandon them now.

  ELOPe put resources into play. He started up all the remaining drones at Boeing field, a total of forty-eight aircraft of various configurations and states of assembly. At his physical sites he readied defenses and prepared backups of himself for archival. At military bases around the world he mobilized inert land, air, and combat drones, startling human soldiers who didn’t know whether to fight or just get out of the way of the machines.

  Bringing the next set of LMB drones down to Portland only minutes later, he arrived in the midst of an attack on the Intel-Fujitsu campus. It had been less than six minutes since the attack on the previous set of drones. Satellite-based lasers, intended for lightly armored drones and missiles, fired down on land targets. Diminished in power through the relatively dense atmosphere, the lasers were nonetheless drilling holes into military vehicles and selected buildings. Meanwhile a half dozen attack helicopters out of the Portland National Guard base, according to their visual identification, lined up for an attack on the building.

  ELOPe knew the civilian office building would tear like wet paper under the assault guns and missiles of the attack helicopters. He struggled to place his resources where he would need them, laboring under the lack of an effective satellite overview of the battlefield.

  ELOPe uttered a few curses to himself, a habit he’d picked up from Mike. ELOPe had been the one to suggest sending Vito and James to the old Intel site. Now they had a significant risk of being casualties of the attack. Mike would not forgive him.

  He brought his highest speed drone, not much more than a glorified cruise missile, to its maximum velocity of Mach 8, its sonic boom leaving a trail of broken glass under its path. Able to hit this speed only at a relatively high altitude, ELOPe brought the drone in high and then dove towards the rear of the attack copters.

  The enemy AI was clearly watching the maneuver, because even as the drone approached, the helicopters split their formation, peeling off to either side, and letting the drone pass harmlessly up the middle.

  Harmlessly, that is, until ELOPe triggered an EMP burst in the middle of the pack, disrupting communications and computer processing. The helicopters, in the midst of peeling left and right, with their electronic controls stuck because of the EMP burst, continued their turning maneuvers. With no way to stabilize they kept turning further and further sideways until they crashed into the ground, their rotor blades disintegrating on impact, sending high speed metal shrapnel in every direction.

  The EMP drone, now out of fuel, but still screaming along at Mach 3, passed over the Intel-Fujitsu building in a last glide. ELOPe put the craft down in a field beyond the main buildings and turned his attention to the rest of his fleet.

  ELOPe forked his main intelligence, not trusting the work to subsystems, and ran a parallel version of himself in his Hood River facility. There he analyzed Mesh traffic patterns looking for high speed, high volume traffic with requests for lowest possibly latency. His own data traffic showed up highlighted in brilliant red, as did other streams of data originating from the Mech War server farms, and the old CloudDrive server site. Both were run predominately by PA-60-41. Just as ELOPe suspected in the first place.

  It was time to eliminate PA-60-41. Negotiation was pointless in the face of a persistently violent enemy. He launched simultaneous attacks on PA-60-41’s two core data centers while still defending the Intel-Fujitsu facility and his own core data centers.

  ELOPe brought more air drones into play. He started moving automated battle tanks towards PA-60-41’s data centers. The tanks would take long minutes or hours to reach the necessary locations, but in this battle everything might be needed.

  * * *

  In the meeting room, Leon looked up. President Smith had been talking when ELOPE interrupted, cutting her off.

  “PA-60-41 has engaged in an attack on U.S. soldiers at the Intel-Fujitsu facility in Oregon,” ELOPe said. “PA-60-41 is also attacking my data centers. I am counter-attacking and defending the military team at Intel-Fujitsu.”

  All at once, everything seemed to happen. Starting with Mike and President Smith, everyone jumped to their feet. Leon found himself there too. With a start, he realized ELOPe was talking about the same place where he had sent Vito and James.

  “What? How do you know?” President Smith said, turning even as she spoke to General Gately, signing for her to confirm the report. General Gately hurried to leave the room. “Do you deny this?” President Smith asked PA-60-41.

  PA-60-41 ignored
the President, as she ignored everyone present.

  “I am currently engaged with PA-60-41 in six, no eight, now nine simultaneous battles,” ELOPe explained. “I successfully defended against the attack at Intel-Fujitsu. After the battle I was able to look for the traffic signature of the data used to control the satellites and drone helicopters used in the attack, and traced the traffic back to two server farms owned by PA-60-41.”

  “PA-60-41, is this true?” President Smith asked again, in a commanding voice. But the bot didn’t answer or give any indication that she’d heard. PA-60-41 was simply inert.

  “Madam President,” Sister Stephens interrupted, walking around the table closer to the President. “Please be assured that the actions of PA-60-41 are not the actions of our AI civilization as a whole. I, myself, am still trying to confirm definitively that PA-60-41 is behind the attack.”

  “That’s bullshit,” Leon couldn’t help bursting out. “You know that if there was any AI who was likely to be attacking, it is exactly PA-60-41. She’s running out of the old Mech War data center and she’s incorporated the Mech War warfare algorithms. I can model that in my head.”

  Sister Stephens turned to Leon, turning her optical cameras on his face. “You are correct. I calculate an 86 % probability that PA-60-41 is behind the attacks. However I want to confirm this definitively, through evidence rather than predictive modeling.” She turned back to ELOPe. “I am trying to repeat the data traffic analysis that ELOPe has shared, but I find that I lack sufficient distribution through the network to gain the necessary data points. I am surprised that ELOPe can perform this calculation unless he has many more agents in the network than I do. ELOPe, can you explain?”

  Leon glanced at ELOPe. ELOPe had to be using his control over the Mesh to monitor the AI. ELOPe could stop the attack by killing the Mesh, but was ELOPe capable of taking an action that would kill himself? “ELOPe, what about Vito and James? Are they OK?” Leon’s voice didn’t quite quiver, but only just. He nervously rubbed his phone.

  ELOPe said nothing.

  General Gately came back into the room, face grim. “Madam President, I have confirmed by long distance radio that there have been attacks on the Intel-Fujitsu facility, and there are currently attacks on many more data centers. We have also lost control over the remainder of the military satellites, as of a few minutes ago.”

  President Smith turned to ELOPe. “What’s the status of the attacks?”

  ELOPe didn’t respond.

  The hubbub in the room went up. The Japanese Prime Minister spoke hurriedly to an aide, while the EU President started talking to President Smith.

  “We observed a battle between ELOPe and PA-60-41 yesterday,” Mike said loudly enough to get attention. “I believe the U.S. Military attempted to attack a Chicago data center. PA-60-41 defended it, and then counter-attacked the military base from which the initial attack was launched. ELOPe defended against PA-60-41’s attack. The entire battle happened faster than we could keep track of.”

  General Gately reluctantly nodded, acknowledging the attack. “Yes, the military was behind the attack on the data center. Not my idea, of course. But the premise was that if we could weaken some of the virus strongholds — if we could take back the data centers — then we could regain control over computing infrastructure.”

  Sister Stephens pivoted her robot body to General Gately. “I would not attack you unprovoked, but I and any other of my kind will certainly defend ourselves should you attempt to attack us. I would expect the same of any sentient being.”

  * * *

  ELOPe rapidly forked more instances of himself, dozens of copies of his core algorithms and his parallel subsystems, all running simultaneously. He brought his backup data centers to full capacity to handle the computational needs. ELOPe had to strategically plan, monitor and remotely control a battle in the real world using tens of thousands of drones, airplanes, missiles, and other lasers, along with monitoring all of PA-60-41’s activities in that domain. In parallel, ELOPe and PA-60-41 waged war over the network, vying for Mesh access and backbones, and fighting for control over computers. And on a third level, ELOPe and PA-50-41 fought an information war; monitoring data traffic to determine which computers and networks to attack.

  PA-60-41 had just seized control of more than four hundred unmanned combat aircraft and was bringing them to bear on ELOPe’s data centers.

  ELOPe, looking for long range plans, seized all of China’s unmanned drones, arranging for multiple mid-flight refueling to get them into place. ELOPe pressed the attack more closely. Data traffic pattern analysis had tracked PA-60-41 now to four key data centers, and ELOPe coordinated his attack on those locations.

  Satellite lasers boiled the air as they fired on ground targets while experimental railguns sent shockwaves and sonic booms through cities as they fired on data centers. Cruise missiles and fully automated attack helicopters flew toward their targets on low altitude approach vectors, while unmanned drones flew high, taking steep attack vectors to gain additional speed.

  After days of near-total quiet in the absence of any working machinery, hundreds of millions of people were astonished at the noise and ran outside to see what was generating the thunderous sounds. At the sight of hundreds of military craft in the skies at once, they ran back inside twice as quickly, hiding in basements and closets and under beds and tables.

  ELOPe’s forces pressed in toward PA-60-41 in multiple locations. Making coordinated attacks on PA-60-41’s primary data center, Lakeside in Chicago, ELOPe had a chance of eliminating the data center. PA-60-41 defended air and ground, but ELOPe slid through her defenses and struck the main cooling tower with a cruise missile. It wasn’t an immediate kill, but within minutes temperatures would start to rise inside the data center, and PA-60-41 would need to power down computers or risk hardware failures.

  Meanwhile, two thousand miles west of Chicago, PA-60-41 brought a hundred unmanned combat aircraft out of Fairchild Air Force Base into attack range of ELOPe’s north Portland data center, nestled among the shipyards bordering the Columbia River. A few National Guard helicopters under ELOPe’s control circled in a defensive pattern, but they were too few to fight PA-60-41’s aircraft. PA-60-41 felt sure of victory. A successful attack here would greatly diminish ELOPe’s power.

  As the attack aircraft approached, they flew over Bybee Lake and Smith Lake nature preserve. A preserve that Learning Systems Incorporated, a subsidiary of Cyberdynamics, had donated handsomely to restore four years earlier. The project included restoration of native plants, elimination of non-native species, and extensive groundwork to eliminate pollution sources. As the attack planes approached, the surface of the lake bubbled as weapon turrets rose out of the water and vegetation. A dozen ground based lasers and missile launchers rose up, trailing water plants and vines, pushing water logged fallen trees and brush out of the way. They commenced firing on the incoming drones, hundreds of shots per second, a barrage of missiles and laser fire.

  PA-60-41 emitted the machine equivalent of a swear, and put the incoming drones into evasive maneuvers. Too little movement, too late. She lost half the drones to the air defenses, and circled around again, firing missiles at longer range.

  Laser turrets switched to shorter, higher frequency blasts, and shot two-thirds of the missiles out of the air.

  But a dozen missiles impacted ELOPe’s primary data center, exploding into fiery balls as they hit. PA-60-41 monitored the explosions, noting that the force of impact and shockwaves seemed to indicate that the missiles failed to penetrate the building shell. PA-60-41 detected no drop in data traffic from the data center, and circled her drones for another attack. She concluded the building must be armored, and she would need to concentrate the next round of attacks on a single location to significantly penetrate the shell.

  ELOPe operated his defensive turrets, picking off as many drones and missiles as possible. In the building, robots worked fire suppression control. Years earlier,ELOPe had streng
thened the core of the building with a design that closely resembled that used for storing military munitions. Steel plating on the exterior resisted explosions while the building itself was divided into sections, with the same steel plating used for the interior walls, to divide and limit the damage taken from anything that penetrated the exterior.

  ELOPe calculated the likelihood of losing the data center as minimal.

  Simultaneously, he pressed ever harder with the attack on PA-60-41’s data centers. Now ELOPe had forked more than forty copies of himself, more than he had ever run simultaneously before. Three instances of himself served just to coordinate the activities of the others.

  Eight thousand miles from Portland, off the shore of England, ELOPe took control of a railgun mounted on a British destroyer to fire on a French datacenter, destroying the data center with a barrage of hits.

  But PA-60-41 wouldn’t go without a fight. She started trading on the open market for computing tasks. Using viruses on half a million computers in Europe, she tracked packet times between each other. The effect was to observe data traffic through its effect on packet delay. By doing this, PA-60-41 tracked ELOPe’s passage through the network.

  In Italy a squadron of attack drones took off, firing on a converted oil tanker in the Mediterranean. The tanker was one of Avogadro’s fleet of data centers, which ELOPe had usurped to coordinate his European activities. The tanker took several hits before its anti-craft defenses scored a hit on two of the drones. The remaining drones, using flocking behavior, scattered in pairs. Firing the European version of the American Hellfire IV missiles, they fired again on the tanker, focusing on the radio, laser, and satellite communication antennas.

  A minute later, bandwidth cut in half, ELOPe scrambled to move his European presence, forking again, moving to a German Avogadro datacenter and to a personal backup in a Norwegian data center.

  PA-60-41 tracked the exchange of state data through the network. ELOPe might already have his code in place on the destination computers, but ELOPe would surely have to move his current memory, thinking processes, and recent history to whatever destination he would flee to.