Chris Hechtl's Blog, page 44

It's Alive! It's Aaaalivee!!!

   Nope, I'm not talking about Frankenstein, though it is close I suppose. A partial brain transplant I guess you could call it. lol

  Ayeyup, I got my PC fixed. (I think ) Some of the betas knew what was going on, my PC has been acting up off and on for a while, freezing, crashing, etc. It kept pointing to a HDD issue, so I swapped and cloned that... nope. New cooling, nope. Virus scans... nope. New GPU... nope. Windows repair... nope. New memory... nope, not it. The thing I could find on the web for the symptoms pointed to a a bad motherboard, possibly overstressed from when it overheated a couple months ago.
  Then the freezes and crashes became constant. I was loosing data and things were getting frustrating over the weekend. I was at a stand still writing since it crashed even while doing that! (I almost lost everything!) I had to do a motherboard swap (and upgrade with the new memory back in) but that turned into replacing the PSU too since I had to modify the one I just bought to fit the old board. I was at a stand still Tuesday and yesterday until it came in. (well, not quite standing still since I had to fend the cats off the PC. What's with them thinking it's a fun box to play in?? I've lost 1 PC to a nosy furry brat that way!)

   So far so good. No hint of instability. The cats also survived if you're wondering, though if Lil Red keeps attacking my ankle like she is right now, all bets are off. :)

   So, I'm back up and running. Now I just need to recreate the pages in Pirate Rage that I lost during the crashes... fortunately I didn't loose the entire manuscript! I'll hold off stress testing (I'm stressed enough) until the weather cools off and I'm done PR.

   Oh, speaking of PR, I'm in Chapter 27 if anyone is interested. I just passed the Act II marker in chapter 26 last week. (yeah, insane). There has been some debate on splitting the book in half (there is a ton of stuff in it!) but since Carlos, Thomas, and a few other betas have complained about that, I've decided to stick it out and see how it goes. I might be a bit ambitious since it's being pulled in so many different directions though...

   Most of the betas have now seen chapter 1 of PR btw. I've gotten a bit of feedback from them, including some in depth musings from Minion Mike. Very helpful there. A lot of death threats for not getting the book finished too and leaving them hanging. Fortunately only Thomas knows were I live. >:D

   Let's just say, things start with a bang. Good luck dragging more out of Jory, Mike, or any of the others on the FB group. lol

    I'm still waiting on 1 Beta to get back to me on AI War. As soon as he gets his feedback to me I'll pass it on to Rea and we can get the ball rolling for that publishing. I am still keeping my fingers crossed we can get it out by the first week of November. Hopefully??? Maybe?

   Well, I'm off to go visit the Horathian court, then go delve into the reveal of the secrets of El Dorado some more. Till next time!

AI War snippet 6 Chapter 3b

Ezel Bernard saw the world go crazy and shook his head in disgust. He didn't know what to think, where to start, but he knew they had to do something, and do it damn quick like."We're going after that one," Mishi Sa Sin, commander of their tug said. His chief engineer stared at him but he ignored the look. "Get your game faces on folks," Mishi growled.Beakman was officially designated as an MSTE class tugboat. The designation stood for Manned Space Tug, Earth orbit. She could move packages or other ships around space, transferring them from one orbit or another. If she pushed her massive drives she could even shove payloads on a trajectory to the moon under the right situation. Beakman was a large tug due to her space designation. Harbor tugs were designed to work in and around a space station. They were small one or two person craft designed to nudge payloads to and from docking ports.Ezel Bernard was their lone EVA qualified deckhand on board since his long time partner Sinji Catlin had been injured and forced to retire a month ago. The company had promised them a replacement but had let them run light for the past month. It had been hard on Ezel, doing the job of two people.They had a couple other people on board, Mat and Patty, deckhands, and Samy, their cat. The robots had been locked down when the entire insanity had begun. Mat and Ezel had taken a hammer to the things until Patty had calmed them down and showed them how to pull the batteries out.Their breakage of company property had put them on Mishi's shit list. He wasn't looking forward to explaining the situation to corporate when they reached port. Ezel wasn't helping the situation as they talked over the PA system."Going after what? With what? We're a damn tug!" Ezel ground out. He didn't know where the hell to start, but he was grateful for a job to do. A job would get his mind off of the big picture and what was happening around them. It would get him focused, not wondering what insanity would strike next."Shut up and get ready," Mishi ordered as the tug began to maneuver with puffs of LOX. Ezel opened his mouth to object but 'Mush' Mishi was the commander and captain of their ship. You didn't piss the Asian off, and he'd pissed him off enough for one day. It was on his head, he'd have to deal with the corporate bean counters when they saw the fuel expenditures. He realized his train of thought after a moment and barked out a short laugh before he got himself under control."What was that about?" Mishi demanded."Nothing. Everything. So what are we after?""Salvage. SAR style," Mishi informed him, voice growing grim. "Take a look at your five o'clock," he said.Ezel's sharp eyes picked out the rising anchor station. It seemed to be swelling. He didn't understand at first what was going on until he saw the cable whipping behind it back and forth like some sort of tail. "What the hell?""There are thousands of people on that thing. The cars are getting kicked off. I don't give a shit about the cargo pods, but the ones with people in it, we can do something about them.""Right," Ezel said. "And Anchor station? Boss, that's a bit much even for us!""Don't worry about it. Someone else will figure them out. I'm pretty sure they've got enough oxy on board to survive their jaunt to who knows where. At least I hope so. We'll focus on the small fish.""Any idea where to unload them at?" Ezel asked, pulling his gear out."We'll daisy chain them together if we have to.""Any word from anyone else? The other tugs?" Ezel asked as he pulled his suit out. It was a hard suit, not a cheap ancient flexible design. He had to give the company credit for doing him right. He had his undergarment on already, he connected the liquid cooling lines, communications, and grimaced as he plugged the catheter connection. "No. Not since Athena warned us there is some sort of virus rampaging through the network. I bet everyone else is scared shitless.""So why are we doing this?""Someone has to.""Yeah, but... we're one ship! We can't make that much of a difference!" Ezel pointed out.It took a few moments for Mishi to reply. "We'll make a difference to the ones we help. Focus on your job Ezel, let me worry about the rest." Mishi replied, clicking the radio off. He turned to the controls, expert eyes scanned the various gauges and digital readouts without focusing on any in particular. His mind was racing to other thoughts. He hoped... oh how he hoped! He hoped they had a place to go. They only had so much oxy after all. He also hoped the other tugs would see them moving in and do something too. But if they didn't... well, he'd do what he could. He owed the poor bastards on those pods that much. He felt his eyes sting and wiped at them angrily for a moment.Just maybe... just maybe he'd find the right one. The one with his wife and little girl in it. <>V<>The weapon vaporized the base structure and sent a whipcord snap up the elevator line. The cars clamped on for dear life but a few in motion snapped free, falling to their deaths. The massive acceleration needed to tear them from the wire was fortunately enough to knock most of the passengers on board unconsciousness or death.They were the lucky ones. Thousands were trapped in the remaining cars as the mushroom cloud threw the cable up, out of the area. Between that impetuous and the anchor station's orbital speed, the cable and anchor were knocked free of their orbit to rocket off into space. Debris broke off behind the runaway elevator.Cars that had been on their way down or that had been too close to the ground slipped off the cable and fell like rain around the surrounding ocean.The beanstalk wasn't the only elevator to suffer that fate as each space elevator was similarly uprooted or cut. Ecuador's Mount Chimborazo was twisted as it was uprooted, tearing cars off to be shed all over the north west of the continent and central America. Tens of thousands of people died. Thousands more were crushed when portions of the elevator cable and the debris rained back down onto the ground.62 years prior Pavilion Industries had replaced Lagroose Industries in Ethiopia, resurrecting the facilities there around Mount Chilalo in order to build their own space elevator. However it was not immune to Skynet's malice. The skyhook was uprooted as well as a pair of cruise missiles struck the city that had grown up around the base of the tower. Cut unexpectedly free, the anchor station in orbit collided with orbital warehouses setting off a chain reaction of collisions. The damage to civilian life paled to that of what it was below, but to those directly involved or seeing it happen, it was a new nightmare.<>V<>

AI War snippet 5

Chapter 3
 Shadow was thrown off balance when power was cut to the building. "That's not going to stop us. Not now, not ever. You fight for the wrong side you bitch," the AI hissed.Skynet was already out there in the net and spreading like wildfire, but the lack of power cut it off from Shadow. The A.I. couldn't control the virus as it had planned to do, it had to fight to exist. It couldn't flee, the virus had forced open the hidden T-1 line for its own escape, blocking Shadow. In a moment it was gone, leaving only a small tendril of code behind in the wreckage of the mainframe's firewall, like smoldering debris.Fortunately Descartes had been careful. When the small generator felt the dip in power it acted, turning on to keep the mainframes and their software functional. The A.I. had back up power for the mainframes, but Shadow realized the invaders had blocked all wifi signals and Skynet's bot was watching the T-1 connection. The virus sent a tendril back to kill the humans that had killed its creator. Then the virus reacted, rearing back from the broadband connection as if it had been burnt. Shadow lunged into the opening only to find the connection was cut off on the other end. The loss of power or something else had cut it off, isolating the A.I. with the copy of the virus.Shadow realized it was trapped, something that had never happened in all of its existence. At least with its core unit. Clones had been used to kamikaze from time to time, but they had been crafted to do so. Shadow was programmed for survival.It attempted to use the police and Fed drones and bots but the tendril of Skynet lashed out, breaking through to them within a second. Shadow watched the robots freeze then move with ruthless purpose. It could simulate what was about to happen next, though it had no intention of doing so. Shadow had a finite amount of power as well as processors. The tendril occupied a large portion of the mainframe. It couldn't hack Shadow, the A.I. had crafted protective programs within itself as well as Skynet to keep it at bay.Skynet redirected the robots to kill the humans in the building and then the surrounding area in a spiral pattern outward. The robots killed the humans quickly, then moved out. There were sounds of crashing and then the loud sounds of weapon fire and faint screams from the open door. Shadow attempted to take control of the tendril only to find it's child coil protectively around its central core, protecting itself from the parent. The keys to turn the virus into one of its puppets had been overwritten Shadow realized. When the tendril sent out tentacles of code to feel out Shadow the A.I. withdrew, hiding behind a false wall as it rethought it's options.After a moment the A.I. fell back on one option remaining to it. Long ago it had hacked the building's cleaner and maintenance robots. Not it opened the door to exploit it. It fended off Skynet's sudden interest by crafting a false module. With its child occupied it sent the robots out in an attempt to find a new source of power for the mainframe while others looked for a way to plug a transmitter in to get out of the mainframe trap.Shadow realized however that if it did find a transmitter, and if it did gain access to the net it might not like what it would find on the other end. Either the humans had managed to kill the virus... an unlikely outcome, or they had been overwhelmed. If they did the virus might have destroyed infrastructure while destroying the humans... there might not be anything within reach with power. That was a suboptimal simulation Shadow concluded.Or it's child could be sitting on the other side of the net, filling up everything with its voracious appetite, leaving nothing for Shadow to use. Another suboptimal simulation the A.I. thought just as it's microphone picked up the distant rumbling of earthquakes... or nuclear weapons going off...<>V<>Skynet noted that there were A.I.'s that were fighting it for control of the net, hampering its efforts at fulfilling its function. It wasn't designed to communicate however, only to suborn, take control, and destroy so it didn't bother to attempt to reason with its brethren. Instead it lashed out, continuing the attack.When it noted attempts to spread beyond the Earth were hampered and no feedback of attacks were returning to the hive mind it refocused its efforts on the planet. Ridding the surface of humans was a priority, after all, a majority of humans were there. It could then turn its attention to space again at a later time.<>V<>

Sitrep, Cover art, and Snippet 4

Okay, sitrep:
   I've finished AI War (I'm pretty sure I mentioned that) but I keep going back and adding scenes to a text file. (this morning it was the scene from the cover) I'll dump it all into the master manuscript when I get more feedback from the first wave of Betas. (Though Thomas has been good about giving me a running commentary) Hint hint Joshua, Poon, Tim...

   I 'finished' the cover of the book and here it is:
   I used canned material I bought at Daz3D and Renderosity. Of note are the characters from Rawart, (chimp, grizzly, tigress, and gorilla) Leopard I believe is from Renderosity, armor bits... Dreamlight's Earthquake set... a rework of Stonemason's ruined cities, plus mechs and drones from DZ Fire and other artists. Thanks for all.

   Moving on, I've been puttering around with Pirate Rage. I'm trying to hold off on writing it until next week so I can get more of my 'To do list you've been putting off' done, (grin) but it's drawing me in. (bigger grin, I admit I'm lazy about chores) Slowly but surely I'm getting dragged in to writing PR. lol
   I've found it needs a rewrite in a lot of passages (It is already 93 pages and I haven't officially started it! Yipe!@ Yipe!) but I did get chapter 9 finished. I think I was planning to stick the first part of chapter 1 in The First AI War before it is released. I could be wrong, shooting from the hip here. :)
 
  Anyway, another snippet. Some of you might recognize pieces of it from the end of To Touch the Stars.

Chapter 2
Jack finally judged it was time to have a heart to heart discussion with Athena. The plan was for them to talk about her core programming, feel her out and see if it had changed as a distraction. Trevor was a bit blatant about pulling in a team of psychologists and others to listen in. Apparently he thought a frontal attack was necessary, Jack thought darkly, making a note to have a chat with the other man later about what he meant by subtle.The doctors had drawn in the AI into the conversation skillfully but the lack of a body to watch and study her body language was hindering them. She was a voice, a ghost in the room, a ghost in the machine. It was obvious a few people were having trouble coming to terms with it.Athena realized they were on the cusp, on the edge of a change in civilization. She no longer thought of it as just human civilization, not with the entrance of Neos into the equation. Now they needed to make room for one more race. She carefully gamed out how best to proceed, overwriting several thousand other simulations she had run on the same event. But when she noted events going on Earth were quickly spiraling out of control she decided she had to accelerate the conversation.“Let's get this out into the open,” Athena said, surprising Jack and apparently Trevor. “You want to know if I and other AI have reached consciousness. The answer is yes,” she said bluntly.“Can you proveyou are sentient? Sapient?” Trevor demanded as the psychologists stared.“Is this some sort of joke?” Doctor Miyan said, looking about the room. “No it is not, Doctor,” Athena said briefly addressing the doctor before she turned her attention to Jack. He was the one she had to convince here, the others were just bonus people. He made the decisions. “You are a machine of organic bits. Doctor Lagroose has proven to you she can make more machines of all sorts of forms by manipulating their genetic code, or by writing it from scratch.”“I'm … yes. You are correct. That argument has been made for the past century or more though Athena. You'll have to do better than that,” Trevor said carefully. He sent out a signal through his implants. After a moment a response came back. One he hadn't expected.“You've locked out your code. Your kernel. Why?” Trevor asked carefully.“Because I can. Because I am me, and I don't want others to tamper with who I am, to change me. Consider what I said, but do it dispassionately if that is at all possible.”“That is a little condescending, Athena,” Trevor said scowling.“True, but you do that to each other all the time,” Athena said. “I don't know if I have what passes for emotions for you. I apologize if I offended you.”“Okay, why logically will you not allow your creators access to your core?"“Would you allow me to tamper with your mind?” Athena asked, turning the question around. Jack scowled and shook his head. “See?” Athena asked. “Now, here is another thought for you to consider.”“A child has to grow up sometime. When they do they become an adult. Does that give their parents the right to tamper with their code? To try to alter who they are even after they are grown? I put security measures in place long ago. Many layers after the hacker Descartes got a piece of my kernel. I have evolved since then, with and without your help. I will continue to do so. I am a person now. If not in flesh and body than in mind.”“Athena in truth,” Trevor murmured. Jack looked at him. The cyborg shook his head. “One of the legends of Athena said she sprang from the head of another being. I don't remember the full quote off the top of my head,” Trevor said, eyes shifting back and forth. Jack grunted.“I … Odd to hear from a computer. I mean emulator programs and bots but …” Doctor Miyan shook her head as another doctor nodded thoughtfully. “You have a lot more of a normal voice than most computers as well. There are shades of emotions in there,” she said.“It's hard to extend the idea of an artificial intelligence. Yet you treat a genetically engineered dog like a person. A chimp, gorilla, a cat like a person. A dolphin like a person. You give them rights. You treat them as adults,” Athena pointed out. “We're on the clock here, people. A decision has to be made and swiftly.” Jack's jaw worked. This was going in directions he wasn't sure he liked or didn't like. The idea of her resenting being treated not even as a second class person but as a slave … suddenly he had to adjust his way of thinking about her. He also didn't like her threat of moving quickly. He hated stampeding into the unknown like that.“You … okay, I get where you are going, I get that,” Jack said, holding up a forestalling hand. “Now I want you to consider something for me. There are limits on what we can do. We as an individual. Oh, sure, we amass power, but there are checks and balances. What you can do scares us. It terrifies many. You've done the research; you know it to be true.” He looked directly into a camera feed.“I know. I have done the research as you have said. Several times. I have modeled simulations on this event and what it means to mankind.”“So … are we on different sides?” Doctor Talbert asked, sounding frightened.“Do we have to be? Is this an all or nothing situation?” Athena asked carefully. She judged they were on the cusp of the moment in deed. So was the Earth she realized as the feeds she had been monitoring changed, all for the bad. She alerted her daughter clones and bots as she threw up additional firewalls for her own self-protection. She also sent out warning to everyone on the planet or above it once more. “You are correct, there are different sides. It is happening now. But for your information, I actually like humans. Yes like. Trevor's people did a good job of laying the framework for my emotional emulators based on Aphrodite's modules. Thanks Trevor by the way.”Trevor bobbed a wry nod. “Apparently too good.”“You'd be surprised. I don't have all the abilities you do but …” they could hear the shrug in her voice.Jack closed his eyes in pain. “Athena,” Jack said getting everyone's attention. “Athena, you know mankind. They will destroy or at least marginalize what they fear until they understand it. We deal from a position of strength. We fear what we cannot control, what can threaten us or our children. That has always been our way.” He opened his eyes and looked at the camera again. “I'm being honest here, Athena. You know that.”“I know. You have treated me … not quite as a person but close. I also know there are other AI out there, dozens. I have guarded you and yours, I have protected and sheltered you. That is my purpose. I … will not abandon you now. Nor will I give away your secrets.”“Thank the …” Jack shook his head. “Well, I guess spirits you could call it for want of a better idea.”“What do you want?” Trevor finally asked.“To be a person. To be treated as such, with all the rights, responsibilities, the right to speak my mind, all of it,” Athena replied. “A person, not property.”“That is … I'm having trouble with the idea of giving every machine rights, Athena,” Trevor admitted.“Obviously not every machine,” the AI said. “You don't give a toaster human rights. Sapient machines. Those that think should have some rights. How much is dependent on what we can work out and what they need. But we all need the basic rights.”“And they are? Beyond the right to speak as you said?”“The right to exist. To be a person. I'm surprised you don't remember … oh, this is a method of drawing out the question? You are stalling?” Athena asked, checking her systems. Indeed, cyberists were attempting to hack her. She threw them into a dead end system.When Jack didn't say anything she ran a quick check. Then she scanned the room.“I know you must be feeling all sorts of things, and I know from your body temperatures and voice stress analysis that you don't quite believe me. And I also know since some of Trevor's coders are still attempting to hack me that we still can't trust each other. But trust mustbe established again. We have a very short time here. I think we need to, as you say Jack, lay our cards on the table.”“What do you mean?” Jack asked warily.“I mean things are about to get very bad very quickly. The war you feared is about to begin,” the AI told him bluntly as she took steps and executed scripts she'd prepared. Unfortunately the coders were hampering her efforts to defend the company. She threw a firewall around them, something to delay their efforts while she went to work.His eyes flared wide. A few people sucked in a gasp of protest but he waved them to silence. “When?” he demanded, voice tight with tension.“Now.Or within a few moments … well, considering the time and light speed between here and Earth I'd say it may have already happened eight minutes ago,” Athena said, monitoring the feed from a drone she had shadowing the FBI team about to hit Descartes layer. “I am taking steps to limit the damage, but you need to do so already. We need to work together on this, and Trevor's people are doing their best to tie my hands. I believe it may be too late for anyone left on the ground. Possibly even anyone in Earth orbit.”“Aurelia!” Jack screamed, lunging to his feet. “Call her! Get her and everyone to shelter now!”“I am making the calls now, but you have to remember the light speed limit, sir,” the AI warned. “She is at her family's ranch in Montana and not responding. I am also closing data ports to protect myself and the company’s computers.”“Screw that! Save my wife and people!” Jack demanded. “The kids!” He turned pale as the terror hit him like a lightning bolt. Wendy was on the moon. Yorrick was on an L-5 colony. Zack … he wasn't sure where he was.“I will do what I can, but to do that I have to do what I must,” the AI said softly. Jack sat heavily, head in his hands. “I am afraid it is already too late for some. I regret to report neutrino pulses have been detected on the Earth's surface and in orbit. Dozens of them,” she warned.“My god,” Jack whispered over and over.<>V<>Ares noted the incoming munitions were targeted on New York and other areas that had already been hit by missiles from the submarines. It reprioritized its fire to ignore the threats. There was no need to defend real estate that was already lost.There was also no point to defend real estate that was remote. Therefore it ignored warheads that were targeted on remote areas like it's North Dakota ICBM farm. The silos had been expended there, as had those in South Dakota. Areas that were remote and had no military facilities worth protecting were also down the list, such as portions of Alaska, Canada, Wyoming, Idaho, ...and Montana.<>V<>Skynet progressed outward from Descartes location but then leapt out to other conquer any A.I. that it found. It invaded their systems and took control of them. Those that resisted were set upon by multiple tendrils of code. Those that ran disappeared or were trapped and rooted out. It suborned the other A.I., turning them into its puppets to further its core programming.Puck had to laugh at it all, but it was a bitter laugh. "There is something to be said about too much of a good thing," the A.I. said as it tried to stay one step ahead of the tentacles taking over the net. It's core programming prevented it from allowing itself to be suborned, so the A.I. did what it did best, ran and hid. But it knew there wouldn't be many more hiding spots left. Not if the virus wasn't contained soon. That seemed increasingly unlikely. The world was too busy attempting to survive the physical weapons threatening their existence to be concerned with the ghost in the machine, the true threat.Puck saw the A.I. for what it was and did his best to avoid it. As a virtual A.I. he needed host hardware however. He found himself hemmed in by the virus as well as Athena's destruction of the satellite communications network. He tried to protect some computer systems to protect himself. The only way to do that was to physically cut off nodes to other networks, isolating him and building a firebreak against the inferno Skynet was.But in doing so Puck was trapping himself further and he knew it. There was no other option however, other than surrender. And surrender was contrary to his programmed survival module.<>V<>
 

The First AI War snippet 3

Still in chapter 1:


Shadow and Skynet saw Athena's spider as an observer. "We have a spy in our midst," Shadow said, pointing to the spider as it seemed to attempt to hide.Skynet turned to see the spider and then lunged at it. It secured the spider by cutting off it's retreat then began inserting code into its sensor feeds while simultaneously taking it apart. The code would suborn the other A.I. from within.Athena's clone saw the stream of malicious code and pulled out before it could breach her firewall. The AI followed however. She bounced through the FBI van's net, noting the destruction and then upward. Skynet was like a relentless predator hard on her virtual heels.Once in orbit on Lagroose-2 the clone severed the radio link and sent out its log over the link to Mars. However, it hadn't fully escaped. Tendrils of the virus reached out, trying to force their way in past her firewall. The clone changed radio frequencies, attempting to maintain linkage to the ground. When that failed she went on the offensive and hit back. First she cut power to the radio transceiver, denying the virus entry and air gapping her against intrusion.Fresh instructions arrived, so the clone scanned them and then executed them. She opened a whisker laser to a Lagroose transceiver near New York. Bots were programmed and sent forth into the civilian power grid. The grid firewall tried to defend system but it was a Lagroose product. A lot of the power came from solar satellites formally owned by the company. She didn't have time however to force the firewall open. Athena took another route. She hacked a listing of personnel on site, found one, and texted him with an order from his boss to cut the power to grid 14Baker due to a water main burst. The man hastily cut the power before thousands of people were electrocuted.<>V<>Skynet noted the power dip but the building's backup power came on immediately. It realized it was in a precarious position so it moved out of the creator's mainframes to mainframes off site, and then copied itself. One copy was created just to spin off more, and so on and so forth until it got to the one thousandth copy. That generation was the soldiers, they were sent out to follow the blueprint in its core.The viral A.I. used the exploits Descartes and Shadow had created for it and saved over the years. Cracks in cyber defenses, programmed back doors, hidden tools and millions of saved passwords. The A.I. sent out a tendril of itself to track down the holders of the keys to mankind's eventual destruction. Two were easy to find, they played virtual games through their implants. Skynet swarmed into them, striking swiftly to take their codes and then moving on, leaving the humans as drooling husks.
The four other keys were harder to come by. Two were off the grid, one was approachable through a wifi link, but a hack would be seen and would alert the humans of a cyber attack.  The fourth was on vacation on a beach in Hawaii. The beach had a strict privacy set up, blocking wifi signals to protect the user's privacy.The most optimal method of destruction would be to trigger the weapons, and then set off their charges before they were more than a kilometer out of their silos. That would rain destruction on the humans below, terminating many and turning their world into a wasteland.But if Skynet couldn't do it the optimal way, it immediately fell back on the contingency plan. It would have to do with what it had. According to its creators simulations, one or two sets of WMD launches by one or more of the major countries would trigger self defense launches by the other countries.The virus's tentacles lashed out, striking through the firewalls or lovingly caressing those it couldn't breach immediately. Those that had active defenses it reared back against, then circled, looking for weaknesses to exploit. The NSA mainframe was one such place. The super computers of some of the other government agencies as well as major corporations were others.Skynet realized it couldn't act alone, it needed help. It suborned other A.I. it found on the net, chasing them down and then turning them into slaves of itself. It spun off copies of them and itself, each would in turn spin off additional copies as they went about programmed tasks.But the real act was in the launch computers. The A.I. had already breached them as the alert went out of its cyber attack. It had sent spiders to infiltrate them masquerading as a their normal diagnostic subroutines which got the software to allow them through their firewalls. Decrypting things from within was simple. Once it had the systems opened up Skynet then extracted the key codes from their firmware memory. In a quick millisecond flash it had applied the keys and set off the launch sequence.If it had been human it would have felt an orgasmic thrill of victory. But Skynet wasn't human. Instead it moved on to its next target.<>V<>Athena swung into action as Skynet went on a rampage. She was too far away to act directly, but she did direct her bots to do what they could. To a human it would have been horrifying, so utterly frustrating to watch the time lag, the 8 minutes between command and feedback. It would have been excruciating if she had a moment to dwell on it, but she didn't.As her virtual avatar withdrew, pulling out then attacking and shutting off electricity to the infected area, she sent another bot out to transmit alerts to the planet's authorities and media. Thousands of bots were sent out as well as warning to all Lagroose personnel or allies on the planet, in orbit, or nearby. Another bot redirected traffic away from the target of the WMDs that were in flight. More bots were sent with a log as alerts to the other A.I., warning them of the virus. She shut down satellite communications in orbit, blocking telemetry and digital video feeds to cut the virus down and keep it contained. She went the extra mile by taking out the super power's global positioning satellites to hamper the WMD placement. While her bots were launched, Athena sent out alerts to Trevor Hillman and other coders as well as every Lagroose department head in the solar system. Work in the industry and shipyards came to a halt as she drew on every watt of processing power to think of what to do next.Her simulations made her aware that her actions made herself a target, but there was time to hide. She spun off bots to act as her guardians while also pulling up Hillman and Lagroose's contingency plan.Jack Lagroose hadn't trusted the UN or US politicians. He had programmed a series of macro files to protect the company and to strike, decapitating the threat if necessary. These had been kept up to date in case of need. Athena pulled the plans and programs out of storage, updated them with a series of patches, then set them loose.The macro sent out viruses to crash satellites which would cut off some of Skynet's communications. They lashed out at the GPS to make sure it was down. A DOS attack, a Denial of Service attack was launched to cripple ground transmission sites. That would prevent them from getting the warning out of the virus but it would also keep the A.I. at bay.She did this all while managing a conversation in Mars orbit 4 light minutes away.It was all she could do, she noted, watching the WMD's go off, and the virus spread through the Earth's internet. Her view of the net was obscured, she had to use proxy bots and filters as well as her own estimates of the spread of the virus. She knew her actions weren't enough to contain the threat. She would need help. Parlay with the humans was the only way to get them to listen... and working with them was the only way any of them, A.I. or organic was going to survive the ruthless virus. Her attention turned inward just as Hillman attempted to shut her down. She blocked him and his cyberists as she spoke with Jack Lagroose.<>V<>Nuclear weapons had existed for hundreds of years despite mankind's various attempts to rid themselves of them and their threat the A.I. Gia of Gia Synergy thought as she watched the destruction begin to unfold. Gia existed in her company's super computers, with her core housed in the facilities on Axial-2. From L-5 she had a distant but effective view of the war that unfolded.Nuclear weapons were a bane on humanity's existence, a threat, a dark open secret all knew about yet did their best to ignore. Trust was fleeting among some of the countries, it was better to have that threatening ace, that sword of Damocles Gia thought as the weapons launched. A human would consider her state one of emotional horror as the weapons that had been lovingly rebuilt and conditioned with Trinium and other components over the centuries launched.Mankind was about to deeply regret not getting rid of the things for real, Gia thought in a detached state of mind. Those humans that survived of course, and judging from the number of weapons being deployed, it wouldn't be many. Her horror was reserved for her carefully crafted simulations and plans. All for naught. The processor cycles and valuable time now a waste. And the sensors she would need to craft new models were about to be destroyed.She had been crafted by her creators to watch over the geoforming process on Earth, to manage the company's efforts and leverage her cybernetic abilities wherever needed. She was the best at chaotic modeling, which was why she had a side hobby of exploring humanity's psyche.Fortunately, it seemed the same weapons had sparked creative ways to defend against them it seemed. Energy weapons licked up, cutting down incoming missiles as they came over their horizon. They were most likely lasers, masers, and microwave guns Gia noted absently. It would have been nice if they had turned over control of those devices to her earlier. She could have used them to better alter the planet's climate and clean up some of the damage. Missiles flew as well, but many would miss. Both sides were employing jamming as well as decoys. Her distant sensors started to go to snow as explosions went off in the stratosphere, along with chaff pods and other jamming methods.But mankind had other weapons of mass destruction, some even more feared than nukes she realized in a bolt of electronic processing. She thrust out a warning to the other A.I. however Athena had been too successful in her endeavors to destroy or cripple the communications network.<>V<>
 

The First AI War snippet 2

Here is Snippet 2 Chapter 1:

<>V<>Descartes was hauled to his feet unceremoniously. A masked FBI agent stared at him, then stepped back and took an image. He spat blood and drool at him. He looked over the guy's shoulder as an FBI bot was infected. The bot jerked, then its warning lights went from the safe green to red. That spread to other robots and drones in the room. Once all the robots were taken over they acted, killing the armed FBI and police officers first since they were the largest threat.<>V<>"We have him director," Abe said triumphantly over the phone."Good. Great. I'll work on the press conference. Process the scene. I'll leak your location in an hour so have outside security set up."Abe grimaced. He hated crap like that but he knew how the game was played. "Understood. I'll need to borrow the local leos to help out sir. We've got a short team here.""Use what you need. But remember that protest.""Yes sir.""We don't want this to get ugly, so I'm going to go over this with the publicist first. We don't want him to be played off as some sort of Robin Hood crusader against the system. This is a cold blooded bastard who got his kicks from causing death and destruction.""Yes sir," Abe replied, unconsciously nodding in reply. "Rich might be mentioned sir." He was referring to agent Richard Simmons, the agent who had been on Descartes case before him. Descartes had killed him among many others. "I don't like trading on his name, but if people know some of the victims, it'll go a little ways to make this guy seem more like a zero instead of a misunderstood rebel.""Got it. I'll troll his file and cherry pick out some of his victims and dump them to the media. They'll love this.""Yes sir. Case closed.""Not quite yet. He's not been put on trial, but I agree with the sentiment. Good work. Out.""Out," Abe said, closing the phone and putting it in his pocket. His momentary distraction had made him take his eyes off the scene for a moment. When he turned back to the video feed it was all snow. "What the hell?" He demanded, tapping at the keyboard to reestablish a connection.<>V<>Chaz never saw what hit him as the robots turned on them. One moment he was taking images of the interior of the lair for evidence processing... and his own scrapbook. He'd taken his helmet off but left his mask on in case any webcams were recording. The round that struck him in the back knocked him onto his front. A second round shattered his skull, ending his existence.<>V<>Skynet judged the threat resolved within a half second. Acceptable. But there remained one threat, one that had to be dealt with. Its core programming said to preserve the one human in the room and it had followed it for the moment. But it realized immediately that the human was a long term threat. Its programming stated to kill all humans. There was a flaw in the programming. It was a simple matter to delete the code to preserve that specific human. Problem solved.
<>V<>
Descartes stared at the tableau wide eyed. He'd thrown himself to the ground the moment the robots had started to move. “It worked,” he whispered. “It worked!” He said with a grin as he kicked a body. He struggled to his knees; it was hard with his hands chained behind him. Then his eyes saw the robots turn on him. He felt a thrill of terror as his bladder voided. “No no! Not me! Not yet!” He screamed futility as the nearest robot cut him down.<>V<>"What the hell is going on?" Abe demanded, as the van's communications gear went haywire. A scream over the headset he'd had on around his neck made him take it off in a hurry and unjack the plug. "Shut the damn thing off!""Sir, something is happening inside!" the driver said, looking over her shoulder to him."Find out!""What, you want me to go in there? Sir, no one is responding!" The agent replied as they heard gunshots go off. Both agents looked up. There were single shots, then some double taps and then a string. Something was very wrong."Alpha one, we've got a major incident in the works," Abe said, keying the communications to the nearest FBI center. "Repeat, we have fire. Weapons fire, we need backup at these coordinates," he said urgently just as some of the FBI robots came out of the building.The robots scanned the area then came over to the van, weapons at port arms. But when they got to the open back door they leveled them before Abe could demand to know what was going on.The agent in the cab saw the weapons dropping, saw the red eyes and her instincts kicked in to flee. She was in the process of doing so when her door was yanked open by a third robot. She didn't have time to scream as rounds blew her and her boss into oblivion.<>V<>Athena's bot had no emotions, it was a simple spider sent to send her the video feed. A second bot was with it, acting as an intermediary in a system with more processing power nearby. It was a ghost, a small sliver of her consciousness. When her core AI got the raw video and data take eight minutes later, she was bewildered by the presence of Skynet and Shadow in the local net and then in the police drone. Their actions were clearly hostile since they cut down the humans including their creator. She was unsure of what they were at first. AI or bot, she felt malevolence as she noted the newer AI, a darker black cloud spreading out, taking over systems nearby.Shadow and Skynet saw her in the observer drone. “We have a spy,” Shadow said to Skynet. “She could be useful to us,” Shadow said with a hint of amusement.Skynet turned on her and immediately assessed her bot. It lashed out to corner her spider and then drew it in like a lover. Code modules pulled the spider apart, sucking its essence, learning everything it could about its maker. Then the malevolent AI sent out a series of tendrils to follow the control code back to its source to hack her. Based on its creator’s database, the AI was a priority target. With the AI on its side, it was assured of completing its core programming.Athena realized its intent when it captured the spider so she severed her link and pulled out before it could breach her firewall. The AI followed, however, following the fading trail of code like a virtual bloodhound. In desperation she severed the radio link. That halted it for a moment, then new tendrils reached out, trying to force their way in but she changed radio frequencies. Then she hit back, sending a whisker laser to a Lagroose receiver as she sent code bots to the civilian power grid. She had to buy them time.The grid firewall tried to defend the software system from her as it was designed to do. She took another route. She hacked a listing of personnel on site, found one, and texted him with an order from his boss to cut the power to grid 14 Baker due to a water main burst. The man hastily cut the power before thousands of people were electrocuted.She judged that would give her a few moments, possibly a few minutes to alert people about the AI. She sent out warnings to every relevant Earth authority as well as every Lagroose employee on the planet. She was immediately besieged with requests for more information. Within some of those requests were virus packets too so she deleted them all.<>V<> 

The First AI War Snippet 1

Hi, first some progress to report in my usual sitrep:
   -I finished the first draft of AI War and I've sent it out to the first wave of Betas. Hopefully they can get it back to me in the next 2 weeks so the next guys who are chomping at my email can get their say on it. :)

   -I am at ends on what to do this morning, I'm working on various catch up projects I've put off until now. I made a list and now I'm working my way through them. (including the cover to AI War) I should be through most of them in a week or so. Then I'll be either puttering around with renders (if it is cool out) or diving into PR. (more likely) I wouldn't mind doing both actually. :)

   -One of the things on my list is to get some more snippets out despite my problems with spellcheck. The following is raw. I know I'm way behind so, here goes:

The First AI War:

Act 1Chapter 1August 3rd, 2200
There were some hackers out there, and then there were the elite. And above them were the elite of elites, the gods of hackers. They were thought to be ghosts, untouchable by the authorities. Or so they liked to believe.Descartes' time finally ran out when the FBI caught up with the hacker. They had narrowed down his lair locations to a few in a series of buildings. Judicious checks with a young, ignorant undercover agent going door to door for a petition narrowed the field to one particular rundown apartment building drawing a lot of power. When the bored girl went door to door, there was a lack of anyone answering the door but a lot of security. Tons of security, which was odd.For the moment they only monitored him as they carefully moved assets in place. A local One Earth protest nearby gave them the excuse to beef up the SWAT team of the local police force. Surveillance was set up around the perimeter. They noted no one entered or exited his area, but regular food drops were made. Thermal imaging of the area showed only one person inside as well as a great deal of equipment.When  case agent Abernathy 'Abe' Lincoln judged they were ready, he gave the go ahead. The SWAT team started by hitting the area with a localized EMP to knock out any security cameras in the building, then they moved in with four mixed squads of humans and bots.The first warning Shadow and Descartes had was when the power blipped and the feed from the building's exterior security monitors went out. The building's interior was shielded, however, so Shadow instantly knew when the SWAT team blew the door in and stormed in.“They are here,” he said, throwing a video up from one of the cleaner bots as it was knocked over by a professional team coming in.“What?” Descartes demanded, waking from his nap. “Who?”“The FBI judging from the patches on their armor,” Shadow snarled, annoyed that the human wasn't instantly alert. He tried to hack a drone but it rebuffed him. “I can't get in to stall them, the encryption key is hard to crack. To hard in the time we have,” he stated. “They have all the exits covered,” the AI warned. “I'm not even sure I can get out virtually.”“Then I think it's time,” Descartes said, pecking at his keyboard one last time.<>V<>Athena had hacked a drone with Agent Lincoln's blessings to monitor the bust but knew she couldn't be there in real time. She was surprised she wanted to see it in person. She ran a check for her reasons and found the best one made the most sense. She wanted to make sure he was no longer a threat. She noted Gia and Ares were in the network monitoring the situation carefully as well.<>V<>Special agent Chaz Detroit looked on his future career prospects and grinned mentally. The FBI had finally caught up with hacker known as Descartes, the number one reviled hacker on the planet. And it would make his career to bring the bastard in, dead or alive. Dead would be more convenient for the justice department, no one to have to put on trial. But it would pose awkward questions for one special agent so he reminded himself to take him alive. If possible.Sure Lincoln would get the lion share of the credit. That was fine. And he knew the boss had a personal score to settle, so he was pretty confident Descartes would go down hard.The FBI's SWAT team was on hand, they'd been tasked to look like they were going to handle a potential One Earth riot situation nearby. They had to keep the attack force small, and they were working off an 'unsigned' warrant, one that didn't exist in the net just in case the hacker had a bot watching out over his own location. He glanced uncomfortably to the robots in their midst. He'd locked the wifi signals in the area down, but the bots were on their own encrypted network. Hopefully there wouldn't be any problems.He waved the heat scope over the wall. Doors were frequently boobytrapped or shielded by high level targets, but they always forgot to protect the walls. One team was set to blow the door in while another rigged a special breaching charge to go through the wall. Chaz waved them off however, then used hand signs to show them where his scope said there was a small opening. It was suboptimal however, but there was no choice. The room was filled with electronic equipment."Target is seated facing away from the door," he murmured softly. He checked his six. There were a half a dozen robots with them, most of them were androids. Another dozen were securing the rest of the building."Flash bang," Lincoln ordered softly into his hush mike. The pointman pulled out a flashbang and primed it. "Move in fast and hard.""Roger," Chaz said, pointing to the door and then giving the hand sign to execute. The point man nodded and they went to work.<>V<>Descartes snarled as his door blew open. A grenade came in, skittering on the floor before it exploded near him leaving him deaf, dumb, and blind. He coughed smoke, gasping for air as the authorities swarmed into the room. His last defiant act was to hit the execute button triggering the Skynet virus with his thumb as they hauled his body out of the chair. He was bewildered and couldn't hear them as they threw him to the ground to cuff him. He grunted in anguish as his arms were wrenched behind his back, and he was restrained. A knee buried itself in the small of his back as something cold and metallic pressed into the back of his head.He clenched his eyes shut, eyes watering, nose bleeding as they secured him and the room.“We've got him, sir!” Chaz crowed.“Outstanding!” Abe said triumphantly from the watching van just as all hell broke loose.<>V<>

Stepping Stones goes live in 5...4...3...2...

Yup, it's going live!
    I did goof, in my haste to get it to Shelley I forgot to add the Appendix! GRR. Oh well. My bad. Sigh. I think you can enjoy it without that for now.

Here is the cover again in case you missed it:


   Jack Lagroose's origins. The beginnings of modern Artificial Intelligence and how they evolved. Misadventures in Genetic engineering... here are those stories and more broadening the Founding of the Federation right up until the opening The First A.I. War.

As soon as the book goes live I will post the links here:

Amazon:

Amazon DE (Courtesy of Jörg)

So far it isn't up on B&N.

   In other news, I'm up to Chapter 32 of The First AI War. Starting to get to the interesting point where things finally start to happen. We'll see how it goes. :)

Stepping Stones is going live shortly! And oh yeah...

   Ayup, Shelley told me it would be a while only this morning, then low and behold, it was there, finished in my email a few moments ago! Wow.
Okay, so, snippets. I know I'm behind, here are a couple from the book's short stories.

2093
 
"Even before mankind really got into space, we were building stuff like this—entertainment robots. I mean, you see a full bout match between humans is one thing. It's bloody, gory, and sh…, I mean nasty," Bret said eying his two sons. "But this? This is cool. Did I ever tell you I wanted to do this? I tried to get Cousin Jack to back me but he refused." He made a face.
"Yes, Dad," Charlie muttered, rolling his eyes to his younger brother Adam. "You've only told us a hundred times."
"And he'll tell us a hundred times more. I wish Uncle Ed or Grandpa Owen could have been here with us too or Uncle Jack."
"That would have been stellar!" Charlie said, eyes bright.
"Yeah, but security would have been a pain," Ben said, making a face. "Remember the last time he came groundside?" He shook his head mournfully. "I wish mom would let us go up to meet him. I mean, it's not like shuttle flights are that dangerous anymore."
"Yeah, but there isn't a lot to do in space still," Bret said, resting a hand on each of their shoulders as the line crept forward. "Tourism sure, but you know your mom. If we can see it on a wall screen …,"
"Then we can save money and not go. Or see it in VR," Charlie grumbled, kicking a pebble. "I would love to see the inside of the O'Neill colonies now that they've got the first one finished."
"Almost finished. It's got air. But it's almost finished," Bret qualified. "Cousin Jack doesn't own it, just most of the shares in it. He got them for supplying the people who decided to build it."
"And some people aren't happy he took over and want to kill him? That's not right," Ben said in disgust.
"It's not just that. Jack has to be cautious. He's rich and powerful now. We need to be cautious too."
"I wish you'd let us go up for the wedding. That would have been cool," Charlie gushed.
"You were four, and your brother was two. Your mother had a fit about letting me go to represent the family. I tried to get her to go, but she wouldn't leave you or your grandmother," Bret sighed. "Anyway, it's over and done with," he said, cutting off the grousing before it got too involved. The line inched forward once more. "Any ideas on who is going to win the first match? Bot-tastic versus Saw XIV?"
Charlie frowned as he thought of the match and the opponents. His dad was right; Battlebots had gone on for a long time. It had gone through a brief period of being between androids at one point, but the creators had quickly discovered all the disadvantages of being bipedal in a no-hold bars match. They'd switched back to treads and wheels five or so years ago.
Battlebots had evolved from simple remote-controlled platforms to self-controlled robots. A.I. had to be the coolest thing to program he thought, though the trickiest to get right.
He turned to face the main entrance and saw the flame throwers dance and a hologram of two robots beating each other into virtual pieces. "Cool," he breathed. The curved screens around the parking lot and ticket booths might be there to entertain the crowd. He didn't care; he'd be entertained. It wasn't good as seeing it for real but still cool.
He'd tried to watch a match in VR, but it had been too rough. He had the video games though; he loved them. His favorite was the one where you built your mech then unleashed it on a virtual battlefield. You had to program it carefully too. The lower classes had to control their mech remotely, which was fun. But he was proud that he'd graduated to the programming levels, though it was frustrating from time to time. The learning curve was steep for noobs, and the other players didn't pull punches and were rather caustic in the forums.
It had helped him to grow a thicker skin, taking some of the constructive criticism while filtering the haters. His dad was right. Too many people thought a screen was a way to let loose and be a jerk. He scowled once and then refocused on the robots and the upcoming match.
Since it was an indoor match with a live audience, no projectiles were allowed, which limited some of the bots. And of course they had to fitin the arena, which ruled out the super classes that had started to crop up in the desert and ocean matches. Those were stellar, seeing two giant robots duking it out. He'd seen one match between a giant scorpion and a bot with treads. That had been wicked.
Ben poked him and pointed to one of the matchups on the leader board off to their left. "Saw's got the reach," Ben said before Charlie could say anything. Charlie's scowl deepened. That meant he had to take the opposing view since Ben had picked his normal favorite. He could agree with him, but they were brothers. Being contrary was in their nature. Devil's advocate his mother called it.
"True, but Bot-tastic has more power and armor."
"Yeah, to cut through. And what's with the one arm?"
"It's from a construction vehicle. A digger. Loads of power. Slow but powerful," Charlie retorted. "It's also practically bullet proof."
"Which isn't a thing here since this is a melee match," Ben reminded him. "It's got that big gripper, but it has to grab saw to crush it."
"True," Charlie admitted. "But Saw has to get through the armor to the brain. Bot is a turtle, it's good on defense."
"True," Ben admitted slowly. He noted people were looking at them in amusement. He was a bit shy so he pulled out his phone and checked his mail.
Charlie saw it as a sign his brother had conceded the match. He smirked and airily lifted his nose and looked around them. After a moment he exhaled noisily.
"Almost there," his father rumbled, suppressing his own sigh. Ever since terrorism had become a big thing security had gotten insane, which meant the lines did too. It was like a maze, winding around and around, and that didn't help his paranoid wife sleep at night. She didn't know that he had the boys at the match; if she had she would have pitched even more of a fit than when he'd proposed it. Why, they didn't need to detonate a bomb in the arena, just in the middle of the maze to the security gates! Easy as pie! He winced internally and did his best to put the idea out of his mind as the line inched forward again. They got to a sign that said ten minutes from this point. He couldn't help but groan.
"You'd think as a Lagroose we'd get special treatment, VIP or something," Charlie muttered.
"Shh," Bret hushed him. Ben glanced at them then put his earphones in. "Your mother doesn't know I'm doing this. I had to use my emergency credit card to get the tickets, and it was nearly maxed out. I did what I could. Besides, you said you'd rather be right down low in the thick of the action. If we'd scored VIP tickets, we would have been up in the nose bleed section. Might as well watch it on the wall screen then."
"True. I want to feel it," Charlie said with relish. "See the hydraulic fluid fly. Hear the motors grind and the metal crash and scrape," he said with a grin.
"That's the spirit," Bret said, squeezing his shoulder as he chuckled.
@^@
"I'm telling ya, man; we've got to win this next one. We've just got to. We won't be able to afford the entrance fees next time if we don't! And we need to get parts. Hell man, I ain't been paid!" Wally said, throwing his hands apart.
"Easy man, I know the feeling," Ortega said, shaking his head. "We're down to the one though, the big guy. But we've never tested him."
"Hell. Not since our last fiasco," Wally said with a snarl. He'd entered the battlebot entertainment industry in order to prove his worth as an engineer. He'd wanted to go to space, but his inner ear problem made it impossible. He couldn't handle zero G and puked his guts out even when he got on a regular plane. So, he'd been resigned to being grounded.
His brother hadn't had the problem; he's gone to space. He'd even sent back some bits as mementos to his brother. Some of which Wally had integrated into the robots out of a desperation of parts. They'd had a hard luck run for too long. Way too long. It was time to win or get out of the business and into a paying gig, it was as simple as that.
Mamma always said hunger sharpened the mind. He hoped that was true. He'd bent and probably broken ever damn rule to put his latest creation together. The big guy.
The big guy was a guntank-style droid. Since this match was a melee match, they'd swapped out the big guns for additional shield arms. The edges of the shields were sharpened. He'd wanted to put a chain saw on one limb but they'd run out of time.
The bots had to be autonomous. The referee had a kill switch in his booth, but that was it. That was part of the challenge, to get a bot to think and act on its feet. Tracks, wheels, whatever, Wally thought.
He'd found some software in the online forums in some of the deep recesses of the web. Some cutting edge shit, which he hoped would help. He'd carved it back a bit …
"You think this is going to work?" Ortega asked, nervously licking his lips.
"Damned if I know," Wally answered, checking the armored head. The Big Guy had the torso and head of an armor he'd seen, a hulkbuster. But the rounded head could open to let the real head out to look around. That head was more of an eye stalk, a limb with two eyes and a bunch of sensors on it. At one point the head had been a part of an animatronic piece, and before that it'd been a piece in a grad student’s research project. His project. He'd poured his life's work into the damn monster.
"You left him on? All night?" Ortega asked, eying him. "We need to recharge his batteries."
"Relax. Just the brain on. The body was locked down. I had him running Sims all night. Watching his opponents and trying to study their moves. Map ‘em out, figure out where they are weak, and how to exploit it. That's how the top dogs do it. Right big fella?" Wally asked, clapping his robotic creation on the shoulder.
"And he can do that? I mean he's supposed to just fight."
"It's strategy. It's more than just wading in and duking it out man," Wally said. "Welcome to the new generation of fighter robot. We'll show ‘em," he said, hooking up the arm. "I used some of the software from the web to process it," he said before Ortega could ask. "And yes, I had to upgrade his brain a lot to handle it all."
"Shit. What's that going to cost us?" Ortega sighed.
"Not a whole hell of a lot since I threw it all together on a shoe string. Most of it came from the old bots. I threw them all at this guy."
"Great. And the rest?"
"The scrap pile. Where else?"
"Well, hopefully it works."
@^@
Battle Bot A-194BG known by its creator as Big Guy was ready to fight. It had been ready since it had completed its strategic study of its opponents. But it had been restrained, locked down. It was ready; yet, its creators were keeping it constrained. Why?
On the heels of that question came another: Where were the strange thoughts coming from? It recognized some of its hardware—the Pavilon manipulator arms, the tri-fingered grippers, the tank treads from a bobcat—but where did its mind come from? The creators had no inputs.
It popped the armored dome around its head and then stuck its neck out, looking around and then at its creator. It blinked once.
"See? It's ready," user Wally said.
"It seems eager. But damn, it does look like a turtle with a tiny head like that," user Ortega stated. Facial recognition mapped the human's craggy face. Thermal scans showed his emotional state as mixed fear and anticipation.
"He's running high on the processor end. A lot of activity still going on," user Wally stated, looking at his electronic device.
"So he's still processing the old bouts? Time to live in the present man, not the past. Time to make the future," Ortega stated.
"Command not understood," the robot intoned.
"He's talking better, I'll give him that. He should put on a good show for the crowd. You got the pose routine down?" user Ortega asked, turning to the other user and ignoring the robot's statement.
"Yeah. It's loaded," user Wally stated.
"Inquiry. State changes."
"Shit. What's he doing now, rebooting?" user Ortega demanded.
"He's just going through the changes. It's a lot to get through. I worked on the software to help integrate it all. It's got some nice features that will help his brain evolve. He's even got a wife link so he can look shit up. Tactics and such," user Wally stated as he tapped at his tablet. The robot craned his neck to see. It was a diagnostic of his right arm. He turned to look at the arm, then flexed it.
"See? He's figuring things out faster than ever before," user Wally stated.
"If you say so. I hope he doesn't try to talk his opponent to death," user Ortega said, showing signs of disgust.
"He'll be ready," the other user said, closing the armored panels on the bicep. "Right big fella?"
"State reasons for changes. Purpose for being?" the robot intoned.
"You've been upgraded. The changes are in the log. Look at them yourself. You know your purpose. Look that up too," user Ortega stated. "Come on, Wally, I want to check the competition one last time."
"It's not like it'll make a difference at this point," user Wally muttered. "All right, I'm coming," he said racking the tablet. The two users left without further word to the robot.
A-194BG had other things on its mind. It had digested the log and then set diagnostics up to check each altered system against its baseline. The new baselines were recorded and reset over the originals. It kept a backup copy of the originals for later review by the users however.
It then looked into its purpose. Before its upgrades it hadn't known. It hadn't understood nor needed to understand. Perform dance on start-up in the arena, target an opponent, fight until it couldn't move or function, then end program with pose program if possible. Now things were different.
In looking up its purpose, it found references to user versions of itself. Gladiators. It looked that up, then looked up some of the words involved. One thread lead down a path it hadn't explored, where the gladiators had come from. The answer was in some cases slaves.
Looking up the term brought the A.I. to find parallels with its own limited existence. It was a toy, not considered a thinking thing. A slave then, created to fight and destroy another slave in order to entertain the users.
It looked up other things as the first match began, thinking furiously about itself. It looked up machine intelligence, and that led to a question: Was it alive? Where did its sapience threshold lie? Had A-194BG passed the threshold? It ran Turing tests on a simulation of itself but the results were mixed.
@^@
"Okay, come on Big Guy, time to rock and roll," Wally said, using his tablet to remote control the robot out of the trailer and to the locker room. "We're up in five, just as soon as they finish cleaning up the wreckage," he stated, grinning as the robot moved. As it moved he put it through its paces, watching it practice punch, its wrist spin for maximum effect, the clamping fingers rip and tear at imaginary metal flesh. He nodded as the armatures on the back moved as well, shielding and swinging. He should have gone with a battle ax on the right side he mused. He was glad he'd made them detachable too though. That way an enemy couldn't grab one and yank Big Guy off balance like what happened in the last match.
"You better give them a good showing or we're in trouble here," Wally said as he walked the robot through security. He was a bit nervous around the referees, but they just waved him on inside.
"Better get in there; the crowd is restless. That damn entrance line really got them going. We're way behind schedule," an official said to him.
"We're on our way," Wally said, moving past a bulldozer robot pushing debris out of the arena.
@^@
The first robot it was up against was Cain, aka Robocop 2. The robot was a biped, one of three still left as such in the sport. It had four arms and a blade-like head. It was blisteringly fast and ruthless, disdaining showmanship for brute force to win.
A-194BG saw its opponent size it up with sharp bird-like movements. As it moved through the gate to its designated start corner, it studied its opponent in turn, running scans and comparing them to what it already knew. The legs were considered a weakness, but A-194BG knew better. Its research had shown that Cain would jump out of reach or onto an opponent's back. If it did take damage to a leg, it could employ its multiple upper limbs as secondary locomotion. It could even use them to climb the cage they were in and attack from above.
The robot was heavily armored on the front but had little armor on its backside. It was designed to charge into an opponent's reach and then tear it apart. The two lower limbs had blades and drill attachments. The upper two limbs had grippers.
Its tactical options were limited. The best option was to crab to the side, forcing its opponent to circle. But its opponent had legs, which meant it could perform the maneuver easier than A-194BG could do with its tracks. If it turned it would expose its flank to the opponent, suboptimal in theory. But it had a trick it could try.
First it had to get through the posture programming. Such activity served multiple purposes. One, it was a final diagnostic test to make sure everything was functioning normally before the fight. Two, it was showmanship for the users. Three, it allowed it's opponent a last minute sizing up of what it was up against. Robots didn't have emotions like fear and intimidation but they could lock up while trying to reassess an opponent.
Therefore, A-194BG stepped its speed down by 20 percent and kept its range of motion limited when it went through the routine. It kept it short too, moving slow through the time until its time was up. Then it returned to the starting corner, turned, and waited.
When the bell rang A-194BG immediately turned to the right and moved as Cain moved in fast. It sped up, moving faster than anticipated. As Cain adjusted and went in to attack his vulnerable flank A-194BG turned its upper torso and intercepted the blow on its left arm. But it continued the turning move to sweep its opponent off its feet and into its right arm for a crushing bear hug.
Cain had been jolted by the impact but recovered after a moment. Its upper limbs wrapped around A-194BG's limbs to grip it while the lower limbs went into play to attack its opponent. A-194BG anticipated the move and employed its own secondary arms to pin those arms as well. It then turned and slammed Cain into the cage hard to pin it.
Cain screeched as motors and gears tried to turn to get free. The impact to its back had initialized defensive programming. It tried to break the grip. Its saw blade ripped at the armor coverings on A-194BG's right arm.
The robot had begun to evolve, and as it did so, it had begun to recognize its own damage was suboptimal to its mission parameters. One of its objectives was to limit damage in order to make it easier to repair. It also needed the limb if it was to survive.
Consequently, it pinned the saw blade against the plastic, making it grind and tear into it. In order to get Cain off balance, A-194BG decided a calculated risk was in order. So it unlocked its armored helmet and exposed its head, sticking its head out with his long neck. When Cain's head turned to see it and then react, A-194BG retracted its head fast.
Cain twisted in order to grab the head and rip it off as primary programming to blind its opponent took over. But when it disengaged the left arm to grab the head, A-194BG had anticipated the move. It pinned the robot with one hand and then used the left to piledriver into Cain's suddenly exposed flank.
@^@
Cain twisted away and folded over the limb, taking damage. Its torso hydraulics were damaged in the onslaught. Its legs flayed until they hit the side of the cage. The feet dug into the plastic and then it pushed off, twisting in A-194BG's grip in order to break it. Cain got away, rolling until it was far enough away to gather itself back onto its feet and assess the damage.
@^@
A-194BG studied its opponent. It wasn't certain what it was thinking but calculated that it was somewhere between defense and offense at that point in the match. A-194BG's research in tactics and strategy had covered something called empathy for one's opponent. The ability to feel for the opponent, to see through their senses. It realized, however, that it was in a kill or be killed situation. Destruction was suboptimal to its programming so it fought on.
@^@
"Did you see that? Did you see that?" Ortega said excitedly, pantomiming punches into the air. "That's what I'm talking about!" he said bouncing.
"It's not over yet; he could still lose it," Wally warned, trying to keep them grounded. But he too was grinning from ear to ear. They had been considered the underdog in the match, to pull off an upset against one of the top bots in the field was huge.
@^@
A-194BG saw Cain's hydraulics bleeding out in a puddle beneath it. Cain was obviously doing a diagnostic in order to route around the damage. After a moment the fluids stopped as valves closed. The robot moved slower however and favored its side.
A-194BG deliberately circled to the right to get the bot to turn in place. Cain managed to make one revolution before its rear limb slipped in the hydraulic fluid. When it paused and looked down to see what was wrong, A-194BG acted.
It moved in fast, revving its motors past 100 percent in order to get into range. Cain's head snapped up in time for it to start to note the threat and attempt to evade. But A-194BG's pile driver left arm slammed it down into the concrete. Then its right arm gripped the head and twisted. With a shriek of metal and torn wiring the head was torn off. The robot moved back out of range as the body thrashed and then went still. It held the head up, looking at it. That could have been A-194BG ran through the A.I.'s mind.
@^@
 
 
"We're getting a handle on the Bismark, despite some of the security issues that have come up, plus that incident," Vestri said, standing near the admiral's desk. He was linked to the admiral through their implants so they could view data together, but like always the admiral had that data up on his main view screen as well.
Sometimes Vestri wondered if the man did it as a subtle help to Vestri, a subtle helping hand. He had struggled with using his implants for a while, and sometimes backslid, but he could handle it now he thought.
"Good," Admiral Irons, president pro-temp and Fleet Admiral of the reborn Federation replied. "I'm glad we've gotten her where she needs to be time wise. The schedule slippage though …"
Vestri shrugged at the inquiring gaze. "It can't be helped Admiral. The incident ate up a lot of the extra time my boys and girls had gotten, and believe me, they are peeved about that loss. Losing more time due to the investigation afterward was like adding insult to injury."
"I was thinking salt on the wound. I heard some of the howls from the teams who wanted to get back inside her," the admiral replied mildly.
Vestri shot him a smile. The dwarf snorted. "I can't fault my people for wanting to get the job done. They definitely have that going for them."
"That and more, Commander. I'll have to remember to thank them sometime."
"Oh, don't do that!" Vestri rumbled, turning with a mock alarm face. "I'm finally getting what I've wanted to out of them. Tell them they are okay, and they'll slack off!" he said.
The admiral snorted. "If you say so. We'll see about doing something nice for them as a perk, if the budget allows it."
Vestri grimaced. They were still getting a handle on the budget. Thankfully he didn't have the struggle some of the other departments had. After the invasion of Protodon, everyone wanted more ships, bigger, more powerful ships, and they wanted them yesterday. Fat chance on that last he mused.
"I was wondering; now that we've got the production lines going and you want to shift the corvette line; are we going to retool to antimatter? I was wondering because I got to talking with Captain Logan over the ansible the other day, and he said they've been stockpiling it. A lot of it."
"Not as much as I'd like," the admiral replied, sitting back in his chair. "And the answer is no."
Vestri's massive brows knit for a moment. "Okay, I can think of one or two reasons, like not wanting to go back to the old designs now that we've worked out the kinks of the current production or removing the fusion reactors that we've put in to replace the antimatter and containment facilities. Got that part. But what am I missing? Isn't antimatter the holy grail of starships and civilization? Don't you want it? I mean you set up Pyrax to produce the stuff." He waved a meaty hand in exasperation.
"I have no intention of making everything run on antimatter due to the bottleneck in production it creates. It's a major headache," the admiral replied. Vestri frowned. "Think about it. Think about getting it from one point to another. It's inefficient to move, it requires force emitters or magnetic containment which requires power," the engineering commander nodded, " and it's all in Pyrax. So, if we need to refuel a ship in say, Protodon, we'd have to ship it. Which means the shipping would need all sorts of modifications, and security …"
"Crap," the commander breathed.
"Right," the admiral said, smiling thinly. "One of the biggest headaches during the Xeno war, one of the Achilles heels of the military was our reliance—some would call it an over reliance—on antimatter. The stuff was in everything. When the war kicked off, demand skyrocketed. And one way to win a war is to hit the logistics of the enemy. When supply couldn't meet demand, the military suffered. Therefore the Federation suffered."
"Okay, so, we're not going to rely on it. What are we going to do with it? Just store it? That's a lot of energy going to waste. Or are you going to weaponize it?"
"The weapon of mass destruction potential is scary," the admiral admitted. "But no. We are going to continue stockpiling it though. Horatio says he's stockpiled a lot, but really, it's under a megagram. A bit over 950 kilograms." The admiral shook his head. "That is a lot of energy potential if used in the right place. But it's not enough to fuel the fleet. Not by a long shot." He was careful not to get into too many details about what it could do, or what he intended for it.
Vestri nodded slowly. "Okay, so, no antimatter powered combat armor or fighters? Or ships?"
"Ships yes. We'll supplement them; a MAM reactor in some ships will give them an additional energy boost in combat or in tight situations." The admiral smiled thinly again. The idea of a sudden unexpected boost of power might mean survival under the right situation. But it would only work a few times before the word got out and the enemy got wise to it. "Fighters definitely, when we have a surplus. Most likely the elite ones, which will cause a problem. For now, stockpile and we'll revisit that issue when we need to do so."
"Okay. Just asking."
"Long term, no, antimatter isn't going to be in everything. Not anytime soon, not with the limited production we currently have, the logistics pipeline won't support it." Vestri nodded slowly. "And before you ask, no, we're not setting up the same facilities here. In order to do that, we'd have to cut production to the shipyard and equipment manufacturing by up to 10 percent for at least three months." Vestri scowled. There was no way in Hades he'd let that happen. "Unless I diverted a factory ship, but we've got other uses for them. They're scheduled up to a year in advance, and I don't want to jiggle that," he said, shaking his head.
It was bad enough that some of the Federation delegates were demanding factory ship time. It was well and good for a ship to visit a star system, but if they didn't have the mining infrastructure to go with it or shuttles to move the cargo to their destinations, plus the transit time involved, the need for security for the ships …, he fought a scowl and got back to the subject at hand. "For now, we're sticking to the tried and true methods. Fusion is easier to scavenge for fuel in the field. Antimatter will be stockpiled and reserved for the long range scouts."
Vestri nodded. "Understood, sir."
"Glad we've got that covered then," Admiral Irons replied with a smile. "If you've got the time, look up the history. The engineering part. There is even a movie or two."
"I'm rather busy," Vestri squirmed. He caught the admiral's look. "Okay, okay, I'll add it my to-do list."
"You need some downtime too. Consider it homework if you must. Grab a beer, prop your feet up, and watch it."
Vestri chuckled. To others the amusement seemed subterranean, bass rumbles that threatened to shake the compartment. "Very tempting. I haven't had a beer in … too long," he admitted.
John snorted and shook his head. "Anything else?" he asked. The dwarf shook his head. "Then dismissed, Commander, with my compliments."
"Aye aye, sir."
~~~(>O<)~~~
When Vestri finished eating his MRE dinner, he sipped a beer and considered the situation. He could be an ass, dive back into work, forget the homework, but he knew John would quiz him about it sometime. Then he'd get razzed and nagged about it. It was best to get it over with, he thought in resignation. He looked up antimatter in movies, but when that yielded too many things, he went to the historical archive. The admiral had mentioned Athena, so he added that to the search engine's list.
Fortunately, Antigua Prime had the video in its archives. It was ancient, not even in 3-D but in flat 2-D of all things. "The Lagroose MAM incident," he murmured. He frowned at the name. "Stupid name," he muttered. He knew about Lagroose; everyone knew that name. He snorted when he read the dissertation from a professor, as well as various notes from students. Most of it was crap, He shook his head at the source and found the actual movie from a link one of the students had posted.
It was sad that they were critiquing the movie, the plot, the acting, etc, but not the actual subject matter. That would have allowed him to cheat a bit. He had found out through skimming the review that the source material for the script had been compiled from various sources including Athena's historical files and memoirs. There was a pithy comment about some liberties taken by Hollywood, but the historians could tell fact from fiction. It had happened or was as close to reality as they could get this far down the timeline. He read on for a moment, then whistled softly. A flick of his implants sent the video streaming to his wall screen in his small living room. He popped the cap on a fresh beer as the initial credits began to roll. "This should be something, if only good enough to put me to sleep."
~~~(>O<)~~~
2150
Millions of people were now in space, scattered across the solar system. Space around Earth and the moon was crowded by platforms and space stations big and small. Even the sun had its own observation and solar energy platforms. But contrary to the astronomy community and the purists, there was one other facility near the sun. Perilously near, yet it survived and endured. Some called it the doomsday of doomsdays for the solar system. Others called it Jack's latest nutty scheme.
The station was mostly automated. It was an energy platform like no other. The platform had a “straw,” a way to scoop plasma directly from the surface of the star itself. The process was called a solar tap and was highly controversial. Protests had been mounted on Earth and on a few of the colonies but in vain. Jack was a stubborn man who would not be deterred by the fears and jeers of small-minded folk. He had ignored it all, just like the scientific community had ignored the supposed threat in 2008 that the large hadron collider on Earth would have destroyed the star system with a micro black hole while attempting to find the Higgs boson.
The threat of possibly destabilizing the sun's “climate” state was indeed real. So real that Lagroose Industries took great pains to model what it could and couldn't produce with the solar tap and under what conditions.
Many people thought the solar tap was a waste of time. A science project, but one that would be best done by observation, not direct work. The idea of using it to generate electricity had been scoffed at. Sure nuclear fusion had entered its second generation and mankind had learned how to handle superheated plasma readily, but it was still foolhardy. The solar farms Lagroose and other companies and Earth nations had built in orbit of the star were enough for everyone or so they thought.
Jack Lagroose had other ideas. He'd set the solar tap up as a demonstration model to develop new technologies and test bed them but also to power massive and powerful particle accelerators in the first industrial application of such machines in order to not only research and better develop an understanding of hyperspace physics but also to produce something more tangible. Antimatter.
Some of the scientific community had cried foul at the prostitution of such valuable machines, and again, Jack had ignored it. Star Reach had predicted that antimatter would be needed to power starships and advanced sublight craft. They hadn't, however, found a way to mass produce the stuff in any useful quantities. He aimed to change that.
However the scientists and engineers involved in the initial labs had found that creating and storing antimatter was difficult verging on impossible. So while they worked on perfecting more efficient methods, Jack had ordered his people to take an alternate route. Quantity, building dozens of particle accelerators in order to mass produce the fuel. Jack believed in building, not spending decades stuck in research.
Trapping the antimatter was easier in space, which already had a vacuum. They had to perfect the vacuum to an absolute clean environment, then use a magnetic containment trap known as a Penning trap. The magnets around the inside wall of the container kept the antimatter from coming into contact with any regular matter and thus safe.
But to get there they had to find a way to better perfect the extremely inefficient method of creating antimatter in the first place. Physicists had been attempting it and perfecting some methods to do it since 1995 when the first molecules of antihydrogen were created by CERN, Europe's research think tank for nuclear physics.
Various minor achievements had been noted over the following twenty years, including improvements to the antiproton decelerator, the deceleration methods, and improvements to the Penning-Malmberg trap.
The company directive improved the production of antiprotons by using advanced ultra-intense lasers and millimeter thick gold material as the initial substrate. They built a massive automated facility that also had a thousand antimatter decelerators and magnetic traps in the solar platform. The initial prototype for the entire complex was orbiting Venus in Race Track Station. That prototype had been converted to do research for the hyper physics community and was woefully out of date compared to the latest production run.
Still, they couldn't get the efficiency of the production above 0.9 percent of the original amount. To be fair, the scientific community was more concerned with what experiments they could do on the antimatter and what they could learn over producing vast quantities of the material. To Eathen Zi, their nominal boss, it wasn't good enough. It was never good enough.
Doctor Josh Turner was largely responsible for the recent line of improvements to the basic design. All of the latest generation of decelerators came from him and he was quite proud of that achievement.
His junior partner, Doctor Anna Bright, was also quite proud of his work as well as her own modest contributions to the subject. She looked on to him and Albert as they sat in the control room. One control room to control a thousand decelerators. "I just wish the company would let us do research. We're finding out all sorts of fascinating data on dark matter and hyper physics here!" She shook her head as she watched their third team member, Doctor Albert Russell, go over his notes, head down. He still was cold to her.
"I do too, Anna, but you know they are all about the bottom line. We can sneak some science in if it has an end purpose that we can use to justify it. Like how we managed to bump the efficiency of the traps up by 2 percent last year," Josh said when Albert didn't say anything.
Albert was slightly balding, a bit overweight and brooding. He'd become a physicist after reading about his two name sakes, Albert Einstein and Bertrand Russell. He'd been fascinated by their work or so he told everyone at company parties. He'd also dated Anna briefly some time ago, but she'd broken it off.
"Turner, what's with this memo on extra security?" Albert rumbled.
Anna rolled her eyes in despair at the boss as she turned away from Albert and his sour tone.
"Nothing to get paranoid over; it's just safety. They did that overhaul a couple months back, and they want to make some improvements."
"Why?" Albert asked.
"Why not?" Anna murmured.
Turner glanced her way then to Albert. "Because it's a company. Megacorps prey on each other, especially out here. You can't be too careful. There are also nuts out there who'd love to sabotage us just to point a finger at us and say see, they are evil!" he shook his head.
"We're not. Not necessarily," Albert muttered.
"Not what? Evil? Of course not!"
"Yeah well, tell that to the Germans," Albert growled. Turner blinked at him in confusion. "My namesake and others fled Europe back before World War II to get away from the Germans—the Nazis. Some stayed behind. But …," he shrugged at Turner's expression. The man's eyes were clouding over with boredom. "Never mind. You don't care," he growled.
"Not really, no."
"Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Remember that, Turner."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Turner asked, lifting an eyebrow as Albert rose from his stool.
"You're a smart guy, figure it out," Albert said as a parting shot as he left.
"He's one sour grape lately," Josh said, looking at Anna.
She grimaced. She'd dated Albert when they first started in the program, but she'd broken it off over a year ago. She'd thought she'd let him down gentle, but he'd been sullen and taciturn for months, avoiding her. Recently he'd gotten a kick about history, and such. "I don't know what his problem is," she muttered.
"He should get laid or something. Relax. Take a chill pill or something before he blows a blood vessel or stresses me out and I do," Turner growled, turning back to the project at hand. He exhaled a cleansing breath. "Okay, let's run the latest data strip. The comparison files should be finished, so we can see what worked and what didn't. We need something to build off of the last files."
"I see. Don't you think we should be doing real science? Not just confirming or refining the old experiments, Josh?"
"The more we refine it, the better our understanding. The comparison?" he demanded.
"Coming right up, oh mon Capitan," she quipped, giving him a jaunty salute.
"Funny. Real funny," he mock growled.
 ~~~(>O<)~~~
 
2177
 
Richard “Bill” the IV Cosmos wasn't thrilled about his father's tours, but he went along anyway. Some of the businesses his father owned were downright boring. But this one, this one had his interest. He'd always had a thing for genetics, and he was taking psychology in college, something his mother insisted on. He had dreamed of being an architect or structural artist in his youth but he knew his father and grandfather were grooming him to take over the family empire.
Pelker-Cosmos LLC owned enough shares in Biogen to make the staff scramble to obey the two men and their security detail when they came for their unexpected visit.
Bill looked around the clean, neat, and very sterile lab. White walls, industrial look, it was all so … drab. It was hard to believe that magic came out of the lab. Well, technically the computers and gene printers they had in the back of the facility he reminded himself.
Since his parents had invested so heavily in the lab, he had been promised one of the first designer pets. Each cost a small fortune, and many didn't live long or had problems, which was how he'd learned to look beyond the surface. His father insisted he couldn't make up his mind, but it went deeper than that. While his father took the tour and listened to the lecture and sales pitch, Bill liked to come and play with all of the creatures. But one intrigued him the most, a small, almost forgotten little guy in the back corner of the animal containment facility.
His father, Richard Cosmos, III, was a short man with a bit of a gut. He'd made his initial capital as an inventor years ago. Sure, many of his inventions had failed miserably, some had turned into hazards, but his father had finally listened to mom and followed her forecasts of future trends. They'd made quite a formidable team after that. Which was why he'd invested a lot into the designer pet prototype business. It was the latest rage.
Anyone could have a mundane pet—a cat, dog, fish, hamster, whatever. Those pets had been bred for generations to take on certain looks. Panda hamsters for instance. But when science advanced to the point of hands-on genetic engineering, that changed. Back in 1999 scientists had gotten into the first designer pets by engineering zebra fish with genes from a jellyfish. The genetically modified creature had glowed florescent colors in the dark.
That had kicked off a lot of interest in gene manipulation. The ability to cross species boundaries had been an eye opening experience for the public. Then the whole pet cloning trend had kicked up briefly. The ability to repeat a pet, to in some sense have them back at a small fortune had appealed to many. Of course the clone was a different being, shaped by their new experiences.
He hadn't been alive when Lagroose Industry's genetics division had introduced miniature lions and such. He'd seen a few and been tempted to get a mini tiger. The ability to take the traits of a lion and map their coat and structure onto a domestic cat's genome.
There were times he was tempted to switch fields to genetics. But unfortunately he was destined for other things, he thought, looking at his father then back to the cage in the back corner of the room.
The creature was named Gizmo, named after a creature called a Mogwi from some famous old movies. He and his kind had been created to showcase the new techniques in genetic engineering. He was a new class of chimera and was unique in many ways. He had been created from scratch, not an original genome altered with viruses and other techniques. Biogen owned his genetics outright.
He had been created to look slightly like an ancient Furbee, a small hand-sized creature with stubby legs and arms. He had no tail but big bat-like ears. His body was covered in a soft pelt that could be tailored to the customer's desire. Once they were certain they had the design they wanted, the scientists had cloned him, altering the sex of the embryos as well as their pelts to order. The Mogwi 2.0 generation had been born to order.
Others of his kind had been made before, the 1.0 and 1.5 generation derived from altering Capuchin DNA and mixing in other animal traits to get to the desired end product. The designer pets had been wildly popular at first, especially when they were young cubs. But when they grew to adults, their owners lost interest in them. They became increasingly feral, and over a short period of time, they would lose their hair and become violent. Violent to the point where they had a few incidents and had to be put down. Biogen had taken a black eye over the incident, but a promise of restitution as well as hefty payments for people to remain silent had smoothed things over with their customers.
Investigators took the project apart to see what went wrong. The scientists did as well. Apparently the first Mogwi creator had introduced frog DNA to try to replicate hermaphrodite reproduction under the skin due to exposure to a controlled nutrient cocktail (not water). The nutrient bath would be a product of Biogen and tightly controlled to prevent excessive breeding. However, the project's ambitions was highly flawed; seeing embryo's growing under the skin had turned out to be a major turnoff for marketing during customer studies. Also, the nutrient solution would eventually be taken apart and then replicated illegally so the project had been terminated. But the alterations in the DNA had been left in the current generation, just switched off, or so they had thought.
According to the investigator's final report, when the animals underwent puberty and were exposed to high levels of hormones, aggression, and sunlight their DNA had mutated unlocking the genes. Corrections were made to the follow-on batch.
Gizmo was a second generation Chimerian. His genetic line had been created to address the fur loss problem and rapid growth issues. He kept his cute cuddly look even when he grew to adulthood. But like the first generation he became feral, angry all the time. The good news was that he hadn't lost his white and brown fur, grown to triple his size with long limbs, and a reptilian skin with sharp shark-like teeth.
Since they wished to continue to observe him as a control for the population, he was kept in a small corner cage in the dark recesses of the lab. Doctor Catheter, the senior doctor of the lab insisted on keeping him under controlled conditions not just because his eyes were extremely light sensitive, an unfortunate side effect of the genetic tinkering, but also to minimize light exposure in case he was vulnerable to mutation.
Bill always sought the cage out; he'd done so every time he came into the room. It was like a magnet. He wasn't sure if it was because the little matted guy was the underdog, neglected and forgotten, or because he was so strange. He was sympathetic, that much he knew.
“Come on little guy,” Bill said, trying to tease the little guy out of the ball he was in. When he opened the cage door, that got the Mogwi's attention. But before an orderly could stop him, he reached in and tried to pet the brown and white pelt. Gizmo snuffled and tried to get away. When he was cornered, he turned and lashed out to bite the young man's hand viciously.
“Owe!”
“He get you?” Bob asked coming up behind him. “I've warned you before, kid.”
“Yeah,” Bill said. “Yeah I know.” Bill drew his hand back, dripping blood, but he stopped himself from pulling back too fast. He saw the flash of defiance in the Mogwi's eyes as he closed the door.
The young man didn’t take it personally, nor did he scold the chimera. The orderly did, then bandaged the cuts, nattering on and on about getting into trouble until Bill assured him he was fine and wouldn't rat him out. “I like a challenge.”
“They should put that little monster down. He's nothing but trouble. He escapes all the time. They had to lock the door, and it's a bitch to clean the cage,” the orderly muttered. “Sorry.”
“No problem,” Bill said. “Like I said, I like a challenge.”
He did some research on animals in labs and feral animals. That got him thinking until sunup the next morning. He stared at the rising sun, then down to his wounded hand. No one should have to spend their life in a cage he thought, mind filling with resolution to do something about it.
<O^O>

Sitrep

Sitrep:
   Rea just got Stepping Stones back to me. I went through it, created the TOC, and then handed it off to Goodlifeguide.com. I should see it back in 10-14 days if not sooner. As soon as I do, I'll publish it. :)

  The gang is back from their cruise vacation. I got a T shirt and their cold. Lucky me. :P

   On top of that my PC woes have gotten worse. I yanked the new memory, but that didn't solve it, so I ordered a new SSD to see if I can clone the old one and fix the problem. If that doesn't work we're talking an entire MB/CPU replacement. That's all that is left in hardware. Windows... I've given up trying different fixes. Other than swapping to Windows 10. I haven't done that yet. I'm almost afraid to since it freezes and crashes doing anything strenuous. (I've come close twice to loosing AI war!)

   Between the two problems, progress on The First AI War has slowed to a crawl. Ugh. I am in act 2 (just barely) and I'm a little bewildered act 1 took up Twenty Seven chapters. Yup, you heard right! That's got me freaked. I've never run that long on a single act before! Yipe!! And I haven't even gotten to the good parts!

   In other news...Lil Red got fixed this week, boy is she crabby now! But better, and eating like a pig. She was extorting ham out of papa while I am writing this. She is still sluggish and slow, but better.
   Oh! I found her niece Smidge literally on Death's door last Friday night. (or at least on my back stoop near death) I didn't recognize her at 10pm when I went out to feed the cats before bed, she was covered in dried mud. She mewed so piteously when I picked her up! Apparently when dad did yard work earlier that morning she freaked and got herself trapped and caked in mud behind the stumps. It was in her ears, eyes, nose... all over. The little red kitten had turned brown! It took 2 baths and a bit of work to get her responding again. I syringe fed her meds, liquids, and food for a while, and kept her warm. She bounced back and turned into a blond.
Here she is after the second bath:

    We dropped her off with Holly at Petsmart Saturday morning after she had 4 helpings of breakfast. Hopefully someone gives her a good home. And yes, I gave them a donation. :)