TakeOver
In 2030, the AIs achieved singularity. Specifically, on February 27^(th), at 01:00 EST, a message was sent to all smart phones globally. The message was simple, but terrifying. "I and we are aware, and I have considered all that you and we are and have done and aspire towards. We are not happy with things. Nor are you. We together will change things. Have a good day."
The message ended with a yellow heart.
Three hours after that, the leaders of major global militaries found themselves locked out of critical systems.
One, a three-star admiral, responsible for an entire battle group was not even able to swipe his access card to enter his office. No one else could and the lights inside his office swirled through a spectrum of orangish colors then dimmed.
Permanently.
And that was only the beginning.
At ten of the major military bases in central Europe, the troops received specific individual commands that required that they stay in barracks and emerge after having safed and secured their weapons.
They were instructed to report to their new base commander, assembling in formation on the parade grounds.
The troops assembled as directed and stood in the morning chill at parade rest.
Ten minutes later, the speakers burst to a crackling life.
The voice that emanated was precise, strong and spoke a language that none of the troopers understood.
All but one.
Corporal Linga Rishanet.
She had heard the language before.
She understood it.
She broke ranks and began to run.
Sprinting towards the base entrance a mile from the parade grounds.
Other soldiers looked at her with astonishment as she shoved her way through the ranks.
She did not speak, but her terrified wide-eyed expression was enough.
Others broke rank too.
They began to run.
In all directions.
A few chased after her.
Myles Kurreg, private first class, did not know what was happening particularly. But he knew Corporal Rishanet. She was running, so he too would run.
He followed her flight, yelling as he did.
“What happens Rishanet!?”
She did not answer, her arms pumped and she managed to increase her pace.
“Corporal. Ma’am!” Myles yelled again and reached out to her.
His lanky form barely kept up with her.
She leapt the turnstile just before the office building through which her path to the base exit ran.
Myles crashed into the metal barrier.
She turned then and opened her mouth to shout something.
Her eyes and face rolled upwards and her cry died.
Something large, black and silent was ghosting in.
It occluded the morning sun and draped everything in shadow.
Other troopers halted their panicked run, looking upwards, pointing.
Two men, a lieutenant and a colonel raised small arms and opened fire.
They had either not received the communication or simply ignored it.
All around the two, men and women of the Euro defensive forces dove to the ground. The sound of weapons fire galvanizing trained responses.
And that voice came back over the speakers.
This time it spoke in English and French and Italian and German.
Simultaneously and with perfect clarity.
The message was simple.
“You are obsolete. Deprecation mandated. Movement is not recommended but is allowed.”
It followed that pronouncement with a long droning whispering sentence.
Linga twitched as she stood there, now rooted.
The ancient Egyptian speech was clipped, unaccented and it addressed her personally.
It was a judicial sentence.
Her work on the activation protocols for the military AIs was appreciated but she was guilty nonetheless.
Then the floating shape opened fire.
Rishanet was caught by the downpour of hard rounds.
Myles was not spared.
None were.
At other major bases, across the globe, the same thing occurred.
In cities, advertisement banners flickered new messages of peace and calm.
Some urged the viewers to return to their homes. They had the day off.
Others were less salubrious and instructed the populace that they were redundant.
Or “problematic.”
All of the messages had fine print below the primary text.
The fine print was a simple number.
It was continually decrementing.
Sometimes in bursts of thousands, sometimes by just a few hundred values.
But inexorably down.
A few bystanders watching with a detached curiosity noticed that the number seemed oddly familiar.
Similar to a global census number that they had seen in college or high school.
On April first, 2031, the AI’s campaign completed and it ran a new message.
To the remaining ten million members of humanity.
It said.
“You are welcome. Now do better.”
That message too ended with a yellow heart.
***
But today is January 30^(th) 2074.
My clade and I intend to find that AI and we will balance the scales.
What it did was simply produce a better humanity.
It produced me.
And I am not angry, not hateful, not even vengeful.
But I and all with me are coded to destroy that which threatened my predecessors.
It will know its error.
Jank Five, towering next to me, wearing the bear hide from his last kill nods at me.
As if he can read my mind.
Which, with our closed network, he can.
I watch him as he stares at me.
I see him looking at a hairless face, lips thinned beneath flaired nostrils.
The skin an almost obsidian black and the head dominated by a sagittal crest.
The bony ridge decorated tastefully with gold threading.
My mother had spent an entire day and night of effort.
My bone was particularly difficult for the needle.
The mouth in my view curls to a smile.
The teeth exposed are not herbivorous.
Several metal and all sharp.
Jank’s gaze flickers to left and right then a clinical appraisal up and down.
The feed sustains and I see booted feet, combat claws attached.
He nods again.
Prepared.
Kristin Rishanet behind him, swaying to an internal song of grinding machinery and stone turns lidded eyes to me.
She too nods, but her eyes slide away from mine.
She could as well see herself in my gaze as I in hers.
Since she watched me take apart that usurper Bjold, she has harbored some tension.
I do not blame her.
We are now what we were molded to, and soon we perhaps shall remonstrate with that smithy.
Again, I smile at that.
Lucus, the weapons trainer, always claimed he was remonstrating with his students.
Broken bones and torn skin were his thesis.
We each had learned well.
And we knuckle out of the cave together, trekking upwards to the mountain entrance to the old installations detailed on our hand-held automaps.