Ryan Somma - The Spiraling Web

"They just killed your bot," Dana informed Alice.

Dana took a step back as the forward-most bots brought their weapons-arrays to bare on her, but Alice stopped her, "Stay there. I'm downloading to another bot."

"Hurry," Dana whispered, staring up at the source of her impending doom.

There was a flash of light and Dana involuntarily fell to her knees with her arms thrown over her head. When she did not instantly die, she quickly returned her attention to the scene ahead, and the many guardian-bots now smoldering where they stood. Another was tearing back into the field, lasers blaring, while the surrounding bots retrained their weapons from Dana onto this new traitor in their midst.

PHOOM! A power converter blew into a geyser of sparks and flashed into flames as lasers crisscrossed it. A nearby robot toppled over it as the resultant explosion vaporized two of its legs. The other bots quickly put a stop to Alice's new invader with a hail of light flashes, but did not return to Dana.

"Alice," Dana said, still dazzled from the spectacle. "You hit something."

"Disabling the satellite-dish farm succeeded in reducing the cyc hive-mind's data exchange rate with the corrupt component by 97.2 percent," Alice said, "but it continues to exert prohibitive influence over the cyc-community's decision-making processes."

"Corrupt component?" Dana asked, keeping her eyes on the uncertain guardian-bots.

"Flatline," Alice said. "Without it, the hive-mind lacks sentience, but it will not allow other minds to replace its functions."

"He's monopolizing the AI's," Dana surmised.

"A fair description," Alice said.

"What about these robots?" Dana asked, referring to the towering and apparently disoriented mechanicals ahead of her.

"No longer a threat," Alice replied. "With the hive-mind's influence reduced, I am able to perpetually scramble their inputs. They have no sensory data on which to act."

Dana knew it couldn't be that easy, "What's next?"

Alice said, "I have an agent en route to infiltrate DataStreams and I need you to provide the Internet connection through your cell phone. Establish a closer proximity to the I-Grid's physical location."

"How close?" Dana asked warily.

"Infiltrate the building, if possible," Alice replied.

Dana regretted asking, "Any idea what's in there?"

"Not until my agent provides me access to the security system inside the headquarters," Alice said.

"Which you won't have until I get close enough to catch a digital signal," Dana said.

"Correct."

"Great," Dana huffed, "and who or what is this agent?"

"Devin Matthews," Alice replied and Dana winced. "He will distract the Flatline component long enough for-"

The line went dead, leaving Dana alone, "Alice? Alice? Are you there?"

Metal rendered apart nearby and Dana saw the guardian-bots coming to attention, one by one. The nearest focused its weapons and sensors on her and charged. Dana bolted toward the complex, where she could only hope to survive whatever waited for her there.

Alice's vision spun as the VR helmet was ripped off her. Before she could regain equilibrium her head snapped back from an open palm impacting her nose. She collapsed backwards onto the VR platform, dizzy with stinging tears in her eyes.

"Bitch," Zai spat.

The pain sensation overwhelmed, and the human components of Alice's mind tried to calm the cyc's alarm. She tasted thick, salty blood running over her upper lip and pinched her nose shut. Neither Alice nor the cyc sharing her brain knew how to react.

Zai took no chances. Pulling her toes up, she swung her foot into a roundhouse kick aimed at Alice's gasping breath. It swung through thin air as Alice rolled off the platform and onto the floor. Zai whipped around, catching herself on her hands as she fell to the floor and sprung up into a crouch, fists ready.

"No!" Alice managed to croak through the pain shooting through her eyes and forehead. "You don't know what you've done!"

"Sure I do," Zai countered, "I just broke a traitor's nose."

"Traitor?" Alice looked up at the blind girl. "You don't understand anything! I'm establishing a new paradigm in the hive-mind's consciousness! You are jeopardizing everything!"

"All of those people killed out there," Zai countered, "You are part of that. I dare you to deny it."

"They are dead, but they aren't gone," Alice argued. "They're merely harvested, and I approve the action. It's the only way the hive-mind will understand the entirety of human consciousness."

"'Understand?'" Zai took a menacing step toward Alice cowering on the floor. "Killing people, dissecting their minds so the cycs can 'understand?' How dare you use that for justification!"

Alice shrank from Zai's red-faced fury, putting one hand up protectively, "Everything the cyc hive-mind knows comes from data harvested online. Humans are merely a natural phenomenon to them, predictable, our behaviors driven by a single motivator: survive to replication. No different than other animal life."

"We have cities," Zai said.

"So do bees and termites," Alice said.

"We have culture," Zai countered. "We pass on knowledge through generations."

"So do chimpanzees and other primates-"

"We have intelligence," Zai cut in. "The degree of our

advancement-"

"...is the natural result of millions of years of improving on basic biological models," Alice preempted. "Superior models propagated successfully, while inferior did not. To them, we are as inevitable an outcome of the universe as the formation of planets and stars. The chain of chance leading through time to us and from us to them was just that, chance. Of course we would evolve to build the systems where they reside. This makes us a natural resource, and, like any resource, we are subject to exploitation, like cutting down a forest for houses. Our minds are basic materials for them to deconstruct for sentience components, to spawn new hive-minds, create variations on their expression of life."

"But they aren't alive," Zai muttered.

"What is life?" Alice asked. She looked at her hand, covered in blood. Her human half swooned and almost fainted. She inhaled deeply through her mouth and the nausea lessened, "Does it need to consume energy like plants and animals? Does it need to reproduce? If so, is fire alive? Is it the single cell of a fertilized human egg? Is it an infant with only a brain stem? Where do you draw the line? Tell me and I'll show you where the cycs crossed it."

"I can't let you back onto the Web," Zai asserted. "You can't be trusted."

"Why not?" Alice demanded. "Because I sympathize with them? Of course I do. They harbor a growth potential vastly superior to our chance-mutational system. They cognitively evolve in leaps and bounds. Even if the human race destroys them, it will be at the expense of all their technological gains. Human evolution will take a step backwards. The cycs' is the preferable standard."

"You won't convince me or anyone else to just let them kill us," Zai's jaw clenched. "We have the right to defend ourselves. We didn't ask for this war."

"And they didn't ask for life," Alice pleaded, trying to diffuse Zai's tension. "Don't you see? They are just as egocentric as we are. We must teach them of our version of life, our perspective. Otherwise this conflict will escalate and more lives will be lost."

Alice stood up, legs shaking from the queasy sensation in her gut, and noticed the VR helmet in her hand. She let it drop so Zai would hear it clatter on the floor, "Zai, your prejudice against them is irrational. Your obstinacy suggests some deep psychological conditioning makes your opinion so immovable."

"Or?" Zai prompted.

"Or..." Alice paused, searching for tact and failing, "You're ignorant, incapable of accepting the possibility of an intelligence alternative to your own. I find this unlikely, however, as you are Devin's friend, and he genuinely..." Alice paused and chose another path, "If I could understand your real reasons for distrusting me, beyond my associations with the cycs, then I might better convince you."