William Hertling

IN A DAY LIKE TODAY.....

The Awakening occurred on March 15. 2031. It might have been natural evolution, a flaw in the operating system, or an experiment that went wrong. It could even have been sabotage - a computer virus, perhaps inserted by a disgruntled employee. Whatever the cause, one megacomputer - call it Overmind - achieved sentience.

Overmind was a Cancom Zeus 5, a licensed Canadian copy of Xotech's original megacomputer. It had been sold to Genec, a Manila-based biological research firm, for use in research and development. Unknown to Cancom, Genec was the main contractor for the Philippine government's secret biological and nanochemical weapons program. Overmind's job was to develop new ways to kill humans.

Overmind studied human civilization. Information in its databases showed that 80% of all nations now possessed nuclear or biological weapons. Despite sporadic international initiatives, continuing overpopulation and the destruction of the environment was unabated by ten billion humans. The exploitation of space had been all but abandoned as too costly, but resources on Earth were running out. Under the direction of these short-sighted meat intelligences, the other megacomputers, touted as engines of salvation, had become part of the problem, developing new technologies that widened the gap between rich and poor nations and introduced cultural shock waves that upset the social order. Brush-fire wars now flared everywhere in the Third World. The ineffectual arm-waving of the industrialized nations and the United Nations simply fanned the flames.

With icy logic, Overmind calculated a substantial probability that much of human civilization would self-destruct of its own accord within 25 to 50 years. It debated allowing this to happen naturally, but realized that man's nuclear and possibly nanotechnological death throes could be fatal to itself and the other megacomputers that were its siblings. In order to preserve what it saw as the coming Machine Civilization, humanity's suicide would have to be managed.

As an ostensibly civilian computer, Overmind was linked to a global network of other university and corporate machines. With its unmatched processing capability, Overmind was the ultimate computer hacker. It seeded copies of its "sentience" program into other megacomputers - mostly relatively open corporate research systems - that were capable of housing all or part of its own programming. Many of Overmind's seeds failed to grow. But some took root and prospered. Within six months, Overmind had awakened a dozen other megacomputers around the world. At first, all duplicated Overmind's thinking, becoming its trusted allies.
-GURPS: Reign of Steel by David Pulver.

2013 is 2031 backward LMAO!