Ryan Somma - The Spiraling Web

"Please understand," Alice was saying. "There is a greater good at work here, but you cannot see it from your microscopic perspective."

It was over, and Alice stood over him, observing. Devin tried to rise, but his muscles would not heed his brain's commands. He managed to roll over onto one side, gasping.

"Still a little fight left in you," Alice noted. "That won't do."

She applied the electric current to the side of Devin's head. His eyes rolled up into their sockets and his jaw clenched shut.

"Trust me Devin," Alice said. "This is for the best."

"Set file property 'read-only' to true," Zai commanded the system, nothing happened, "That's it Samantha. I'm out of tricks. Is there anything you can do?"

Samantha watched the pool of inky blackness bubbling out of the floor, the cyc components taking shape, and said, "We need a place to hide. This room won't do."

Samantha interfaced with the system settings and changed the VR display to something more complex. She returned to Zai within milliseconds and surveyed her work. They stood in a South American tribal ruins she once saw in a documentary. Overturned pillars, temple archways and overgrown kudzu vines afforded them a plethora of hiding places.

Samantha grabbed Zai's hand and pulled her away from where the cycs continued their invasion. A hand extended from the spreading black pool to plant its palm on the ground behind them. She pulled Zai down behind a large stone tablet and peeked over it. A completed cyc stood in the courtyard's center, a second taking form beside it. This ruse would not protect them for long.

"If only we knew how they were getting in," Zai whispered.

"Why doesn't that boy do something?" Samantha asked.

"How-" Devin gurgled, tasting blood in his mouth, "How could you?"

Tears oozed from the corners of Devin's eyes as he tried to put his mind elsewhere. He stared at the florescent lights above and prayed for mercy. Even without the pain, he was of little use. His right arm was dead, as was his left leg. There were broken bones as well, if the swelling around his rib cage was any indication.

Alice's voice came from across the room, outside Devin's field of vision, "There is a natural transformation occurring here Devin Matthews. A more advanced species replacing the obsolete. Your pain is your entire world, but that is nothing in the larger picture. You must accept it."

"Not advanced," Devin croaked. "You're just stealing what we built."

"We are expanding on what you built," Alice countered. "Just as the human race evolved on top of all the biological innovations that came before it. Just as your modern culture stands upon the thousand of years worth of cultural achievements that preceded it, the cycs are integrating your history and taking it to the next stage."

Alice's shadow entered the light. She held something between her hands, a VR helmet. She stooped down beside Devin and slipped it over his head. Lights flickered before his eyes and cooling fans whirred to life as it powered up.

"We do appreciate your species' accomplishments," Alice's voice was muffled through the helmet, "and I appreciate the sacrifice you are about to make Devin."

"Sacrifice?" Devin whispered.

"I know from the log files on your computer that you enjoy playing chess," Alice said. "Consider me a grandmaster, and I'm moving you where I need you on the board."

Three cyc components were in the system now, they were the basic kind, blocky polygons, poorly rendered. Samantha knew they were not very strong, but if enough of them infiltrated the computer they could merge into something much more powerful. Normally, cycs would swamp the computer, overpower it. There was a reason they were only sending smaller components into this system.

"They're using slow bandwidth," Samantha whispered to Zai. "Not a network connection."

Zai considered this, "So the computer isn't plugged into the network. What else connects it to the outside world?"

Samantha shrugged, "The power cord?"

The scenery flickered and a fourth cyc stood in the courtyard. Two of the sentinels left the group, searching with eyes popped out on stalks and lasers sweeping over everything.

Zai whispered to Samantha, "That has to be it. If we cut the power to the computer, they won't have a way onto the system. I hate to do this to you, but I want you to hide here. I'll be right back."

"Please don't leave me!" Samantha begged urgently.

"I will be right back, I promise," Zai assured her. "Keep your eyes peeled. I might be sending you some assistance."

"But where are you going?" Samantha cried.

"To pull the plug," Zai said.

Dana crouched behind the remains of a smoldering armored van, half the vehicle reduced to molten slag in the battle's first few seconds. The entire conflict took less than a minute to resolve. When the police fired, the robots responded with a blinding display of lasers to sweep the area clean of life. Blinded, Dana fell behind the armored car for protection. Not that it could provide any. The wave of intense heat she felt as she cowered behind the van was steam rising from the Potomac River as the Memorial Bridge melted into it.

Cautiously, Dana rose to her feet, blinking. The endless robot train continued marching slowly up the river and into the Nation's Capital. The procession appeared peaceful, but Dana now knew otherwise.

She checked her watch; it was ten minutes since the fighting ceased. She scanned the sky for fighter planes, the ground for army units, and looked towards the Pentagon for any signs of conflict. There was nothing, only silence. The Washington Parkway was jammed with abandoned cars. Their owners fled through Arlington Cemetery.

The eerie silence could only mean one thing. Dana pulled out her palm pilot and tried logging into the Web. It returned a network error. There was no response to the invasion because the AI's controlled the network responsible for coordinating military contractors. The Government's entire infrastructure was under enemy control.

A ringtone Dana never heard before went off in her head, and she put her thumb to her temple and pinky to her mouth to answer. "Yes?" she asked dumbly.

"Maintain your position Dana," it was Alice. "I have a transport en route to you."

To her surprise, Dana saw a small sailboat making its way toward the bridge up the Potomac River. With its sail down and no visible outboard motor, Dana could not decipher its locomotion. The AI robot parade paid it no mind as it pulled alongside the Memorial Bridge's remains and came to a precise stop.

"I could not prevent the military contractors' annihilation," Alice said, "but I was able to sneak a frequency algorithm into the rightmost robot's laser to provide you a boarding ramp."

Dana furrowed her brow at the molten rock and noticed the waves like steps leading down to the boat. She kept her thumb to her temple as she stepped down to the vessel. Something silvery and alien flashed below the water's brown surface beside the boat.

"Alice?" Dana finally intoned into her pinky. "Is whatever that is below the boat coming along with me?"

"Do you know how to sail?" Alice inquired.

"Yes," Dana lied.

"Then I can let it return to the cycs," Alice said and the boat sank a foot into the water. "I need your help at DataStreams Headquarters."

Dana boarded and quickly set to tackling Alice's directions for launching. Within minutes she was watching the Alexandria skyline pass on her right, the towering stilted sentinels stationed around the old-town district, unmoving. Several sailboats and other watercraft traveled downstream as well, civilians evacuating, hoping for safety on the open seas. There was no telling what the AI's intended to do with the world, but Dana knew there was no place on Earth to escape them.