Ryan Somma - The Spiraling Web

Devin shook his head ruefully, What a jerk .

So Devin scanned for keywords and soon found the word "masking". This program would present a fake avatar to the servers. Whether it would hide him from Flatline long enough for him to find help, Devin could only hope.

What help do you expect to find?

With this doubt, his hopes sank like there was a lead weight on his heart. Sun-Wu Kong and Traveler were the obvious candidates. They had the technical expertise to challenge Flatline, but the way things sounded, no one in the world was able to take on this AI invasion. They were the most logical choices, but another name crept into Devin's mind against his will. Someone he longed to talk with just because.

BlackSheep .

He shook the thought from his head, he would figure out what to do once he was online again. The homeless person had told him the public library had free VR-helmets and gloves to surf the Web. If Devin could get there in the morning, he might be able to get online. He merely had to avoid arrest in a city where every law enforcement company was looking to cash in on the bounty he was most likely carrying on his head.

My mom's gonna kill me , he thought slipping down between the trash bags and into sleep.

The program finished its sweep after thirty-three minutes, fifteen seconds and Alice shifted to the edge of her seat. If the anti-virus software was successful, now would come the proof. The system's resource monitor dropped from one hundred percent, leveling off at two percent, average for an idle computer. If the virus jumped out again so would the resources monitor. Nothing.

"Success," Alice said without enthusiasm, keeping her eyes on the monitor.

"Very good," Mow Chien said, watching from his system.

"Yeah," Alice did not look at him; her eyes were still fixated on the monitor. Any moment she expected to see that processing spike that would send her back to square one, but there was nothing. It seemed unreal, having spent the entire night fighting it.

"You are sorry to see it loose," Mow noted looking over her shoulder, "Perhaps you wish it would rise from the ashes again?"

Reluctantly, Alice turned away from the monitor, and looked at him Her downcast face speaking volumes

Mow nodded, "Unfortunately its purpose is not constructive."

Alice glanced at Dana across the room, who had her thumb pressed to her temple and was speaking through her pinky into the cellphone implanted in her hand. The woman was too engrossed in her conversation to hear them. Alice said to Mow, "I can't help but wonder..." Her eyes dropped.

"Yes?" Mow ducked his head under hers, seeking eye contact.

"Do you believe in Artificial Intelligence?" she asked him, looking up.

Mow did not have to think about it, "Of course. We think we are unique... gifted, but it is only a matter of time until our thinking machines can out-think us. Look at how advanced chatbots have become, most people don't know the difference. Sooner or later the human mind will produce another kind of mind."

"Another kind of mind," Alice muttered, "This program learns, adapts, and improves itself. Doesn't that qualify?"

"Perhaps," Mow was thoughtful, "but we do not see sentience. We do not see purpose in its actions. In the absence of reason, we cannot know if it is truly intelligent."

Alice nodded silently. The green, scrolling graph of the processor's usage was now a flat line across the screen, dead. After a pause she spoke again, "I suppose if we could communicate with it, then it could tell us its purpose."

Mow shrugged, "Or if we could find its designer..."

"If only we were so lucky," Alice sighed.

"We might just be," it was Dana announced, "It looks like we've got a lead, a kid named Devin Matthews living in Norfolk, Virginia of all places. I've sent agents to his parent's house to confiscate his computer. He evaded the local law enforcement several hours ago, but we were only just able to negotiate a price for the ID."

"I don't believe it," Alice folded her arms over her chest. "No way a kid pulled off a piece of programming this advanced. It's a ruse, a decoy thrown out by the real programmer."

"The kid's a lot smarter than his file shows," Dana countered, and stuck out her chest. "He's connected with avatar swiping, identity theft. We've got evidence of him infiltrating secure databases with 1024-bit encryption. What you see in his profile is the front, all the real work he's done was under the avatar of one Almerick Lim."

"That's ridiculous," Alice muttered, shaking her head, and then under her breath, "but a luddite like you wouldn't understand why."

Dana reminded herself that, while Alice was smarter, she could still break the wisp of a woman in half easily. She wasn't even an A-cup for goodness sakes. Dana pretended not to hear the remark, "He was wise to pick that avatar too. I actually met Almerick Lim ages ago when I was an independent contractor. He'd designed some softwares so powerful they shut down DataStreams Incorporated for a month. Only he didn't program them," Dana said, remembering the odd, egotistical fellow with the penchant for nightmarish avatars. "He grew them, had a series of servers he used to randomly generate programs and then let them compete for survival."

"Where is he now?" Alice perked up.

"Dead," Dana said. "He committed suicide when the company shut down his experiment."

Alice sighed, "I guess it just seems anticlimactic."

"How do you mean?"

"She was expecting more," Mow spoke up, "This virus is quite spectacular. We we're looking forward to meeting its engineer."

Dana looked confused, "Well, considering the level of effort you put into destroying the thing, no human on earth could meet your expectations. The best you could hope for was aliens from outer space."

Alice grinned suddenly, looking distant.

"Now look what you've done," Mow scorned Dana, "She's fantasizing about programs written by extraterrestrial life. You know better."

"I don't know how her mind works," Dana defended and waved a hand in front of the ghostly woman, "Alice."

Alice blinked and returned to the Detective, "Yes?"

Dana pointed at the data scrolling across the screen, it was gibberish to her, "What's the next step? We need to move on this."

"The next step is getting this program to all major networks and service providers around the world," Alice said, "We need to make sure they all run the program at approximately the same time, attack on all fronts at once, to give the virus no chance to react. Tell the administrators that the program will consume all system resources, so they won't be able to do anything else while it's running. Once finished, the program will trace the virus to other systems and scour them too."

"Okay, I'll need your help preparing a statement," Dana began to walk out of the room, "We'll put your program on the Net with instructions on how to use it."

"No!" Alice stood up urgently, "You can't use the Web!"

"Why not?" Alice's reaction catching Dana off-guard.

"Because..." Alice seemed unsure, "Because you might warn the virus of our intentions."

Dana only stared at her with disbelief.

Alice waved her hands as if she were seeking to pull words from the air, "From the behavior I've observed, this thing actually reads programs and understands them. I don't know how, but the way it reacts implies some form of intuition. It might be able to read our e-mails and Web sites as well."

Dana regarded Alice as if she'd just sprouted a third arm out of her forehead.

"We can't take the chance," Alice pressed.

"Okay," Dana said reluctantly, still regarding Alice oddly, "You're the expert on this. We'll do it the old fashioned way... with radio broadcasts, phone and paper alerts. We've got a system in place in case the entire World Wide Web disappears. We'll activate that. Get the documentation ready for your software."