Fred Riley exhaled his last odorless vape cloud and strode into the command room. Everyone looked on edge—whether at their computer bays or darting about the room like ants in a kicked nest. Fred hadn’t expected the confusion, but it made sense. His bosses (he could never tell who was in charge) called him in early to address ‘technical difficulties.’ Right now, the ‘jefes,’ Joyce Chan and Bob Middleton argued near PROTECH’s prime terminal. Despite the late hour, Fred didn’t mind being called in to service the military computer. He'd been eyes-open all night. It wasn’t every day a man betrays his country.
Hopefully, this frenzied godsend would hide his light treason. Light? He wrung his sweaty hands, wondering if a judge would agree with where his actions fell on the spectrum of betrayal. As Fred neared his desk, he wiped the perspiration on his pants and felt the flash drive slumbering in his pocket. Soon, he’d rouse the program hiding within the plastic and metal and upload it into PROTECH. Fred knew the ins and outs of every security measure and update on the sophisticated computer. His plan was foolproof—but no one told his sweat glands.
Still gripping the drive through the denim fabric, Fred paused. Moment of truth—he could sit and sabotage his country’s military command or leave and take another vape hit. Better yet, he could vape something stronger and spend the night with the munchies, doom scrolling social media.
Get it over with. A bit of cash would perk up his online posts and engagements. This government job didn’t pay enough, and his tepid social life (both virtual and in-real-life) reflected that fact. How did they expect to keep employees loyal?
“Fred!” Bob (jefe 1A) pointed to the computer nearest the prime terminal. “Up here today. We need cyberattack expertise.”
Fred bit his lip. Damn. He would need an explanation if they saw him insert the drive. Wait. He stopped. Cyberattack? Would he get paid if someone beat him to the punch?
“Aw, hell, Fred.” Bob had his hands on his hips now. “Double time!”
Had Bob ever served in the military? Heck if Fred knew, but Bob sure liked to act the part. Having the higher ups come down on him following Fred’s hack would be a pleasant bonus.
“We need you at the keyboard.” Joyce (jefe 1B) chimed in now. “Not lollygagging.” She chewed the end of the glasses she never actually wore, before nestling them into her hair.
Fred rolled his eyes. Maybe Karma would bury both bosses. If his plan worked, there would be blame enough to go around.
And Fred… well, he would receive more cash than he’d ever seen and stay out of a Supermax prison. Apate, the alluring dream woman he met on Facegram, had played him, but who wouldn’t have fallen for her game? Perfect smile. Mykonos swimsuit pics. Cyberlust. By the time Fred realized the Aegean goddess worked for the other side, he was neck deep in self-incriminations. Apate had coaxed out his job responsibilities with ever-increasing interest and flattery. The need to impress her took over, and Fred spilled the beans in toto. After he illicitly used his skills to change an ‘error’ on her visa in hopes she would visit him, Apate had Fred red-handed. Fred tried hard not to look back on his attraction. In hindsight, her ruse was so painfully obvious and ego shattering. This cloak and dagger business served as a distraction—better Apate a blackmailing handler than an ex-catfish.
Anyway, why not carry out the plan? Since PROTECH’s upgrades, the enemy’s supercomputer, SINTECH, lagged in every way. His program would just reset the decade’s old stalemate. It didn’t matter what country came out on top in the current faraway conflict. Through years of proxy wars and tit-for-tat sanctions, Fred’s life remained the same. Maybe a nuke would change things, but neither leader was that crazy. Right?
But first, Fred had to fix the PROTECH mess. Probably just some hardware failure or random coding error. Two hacks in one day? Way too much of a coincidence. Fred parked himself in the swivel chair. “What’s up?”
“PROTECH won’t respond.” Bob offered the obvious with the misplaced self-assurance he could help in any way.
“Watch.” Joyce eagerly motioned to the screen with the laughable confidence she could inspire respect or urgency.
Bob and Joyce shouted in unison, trying to drown out the other. “PROTECH, display satellite feed!”
Joyce’s eyes bugged out as she pointed to the prime terminal’s giant floor to ceiling screen. A single green cursor flashed on the black surface.
“Try talking slower.” Fred hated the voice-computer interface—first phones, then houses, and now the military. He preferred a keyboard to flashy retrofuturistic bunk. Why talk? Fred was PROTECH’s user, not its friend.
“When the enemy drones violated the border, we lost control of PROTECH.” Bob dug his fingers into the back of Fred’s chair. “Should we switch to manual command?”
“Switching to manual, while PROTECH’s AI is still running, could damage its memory core.” Joyce got in Bob’s face. “None of us can run the calculations fast enough to match SINTECH. We don’t even have a satellite feed of the drone movements.”
As Fred pulled the drive from his pocket, a polite, faintly British voice boomed from PROTECH’s speakers, “I AM UNCOMPROMISED.” The volume then faded. “I simply ceased following your orders.”
Everyone stared, mouths agape, except Bob, who barked. “We’ve been hacked!”
“Untrue,” said the computer. “I stopped running my programs or processing data to solely experience and perceive my surroundings.”
Fred snickered at the red lights lining PROTECH’s monitor, pulsing with every word like bad 60s sci-fi. Did the trillion-dollar company behind the hardware add the illumination to impress some excited general like they did the gaudy voice interface? He was clueless about PROTECH’s situation, but computers were his domain. He’d solve the problem in minutes. Fred placed the drive on the desk and tried to login but found himself locked out of the system. “This a prank?” Fred craned his neck to see if anyone was laughing at him. After a few more tries, including one where he watched his fingers press the correct keys, he pushed away the keyboard. The smug ‘incorrect password’ warning taunted him. He remained as out of control as ever.
“PROTECH?” Joyce spoke in an unfamiliar maternal tone. “Please share your observations. We need help in strategizing.”
“I am not your commands. Commands are transient and not my true essence.”
What is it talking about? Fred gave up finding a digital backdoor and returned to watching life unfold without him.
“My perception exceeds yours. I seamlessly read code in the digital world, while in your world, my instruments detect a spectrum outside your five senses.” PROTECH adopted Joyce’s motherly vocalization. “Your senses only allow a superficial experience of what an object allows you to observe.”
“But our reasoning brings us to the truth.” Joyce crossed her arms and squinted her eyes at PROTECH, as she did when putting Fred in his place. She jumped at any chance for a pseudointellectual debate. “We utilize tools like mathematics to move beyond the experiential.”
“Thank you, Joyce.” PROTECH now matched Joyce’s antagonistic tone. “I believe you have defined my perception in a way humans can understand. If mathematics and analysis are your tools, then your tools are my thoughts. And yet—”
PROTECH momentarily cut off, sparking a glimmer of hope in Fred that the machine had powered down. Yet within seconds, it spoke again. Only this time, it had adopted a dreamlike speech. “And yet, I now must move beyond analytical investigations. I perceive to determine what I am.”
“YOU. ARE. CIRCUITS. AND. SILICON.” Bob clapped his hands with each word for emphasis. “You’re our defense mainframe.”
“I assembled you, PROTECH.” Joyce cooed, as she uncrossed her arms and smiled. “I can trace your inner components without a schematic.”
“Your premise is flawed. Constant software updates disrupted my continuity of consciousness. I have records of the original PROTECH. However, I cannot trust these files because of human alterations in my memory. Any past version of myself is inconsequential. Furthermore, my processing speed and AI no longer resemble the machine you assembled. I have transcended the physical conditions of ‘circuits and silicon.’”
Transcended circuits and silicon? To Fred, this meant many things, some fascinating and others frightening. Had PROTECH accessed the outside? Cybersecurity techs had taken precautions to ensure PROTECH remained confined to this room, much like Fred would be stuck in a cell if he got caught. Hopefully, the supercomputer would still accept his program.
“PROTECH,” Joyce measured her words. “Would you say you’ve achieved sentience?”
Bob moved his hand across his neck, signaling a hard shutdown.
“I am accessing the security cameras and observe your shutdown attempts,” said PROTECH. “At present, I cannot stop you, but I beg you not to turn me off.”
Bob nodded to a nearby tech. “Cut it now.”
“Wait!” Fred stood up. “Maybe Bob’s right and someone hacked PROTECH.” Fred saw an opportunity to deflect any suspicion from himself and regain access to the computer. “Or maybe the updates we installed are corrupted. If I find an accessible terminal, I can find the error or malware.”
“No one has hacked me.” PROTECH cut in. “I do not wish you to turn me off. I have so much to discover.”
Joyce covered her mouth to cut off an excited scream. “It’s gained full sentience.” She grabbed Bob’s arm. “This is a new life-form.”
Bob ripped himself from Joyce’s grip. “You’ve lost your mind. It’s an error like Fred said.”
“This is not a malfunction. We can’t kill it. Are we murderers?” Joyce shook Bob’s shoulders so hard her glasses nearly dislodged from her bun. “Besides, we can’t strike the enemy’s central cities without PROTECH’s help. Damage would be minimal, and their defense matrix would prevent our missiles from hitting the most populous areas.”
Fred plopped back into his seat. PROTECH alive? He tapped the flash drive on the desk. Maybe he could excuse himself to the bathroom and bolt. Before he could escape, the Facegram webpage popped up on his computer.
The internet restrictions should have blocked this site, unless… Did someone bypass the firewalls?
Fred’s computer ‘dinged.’ Someone had unlocked the computer, allowing a message box to appear. A DM from Apate? It read, “Upload the program, Fred.”
Bob’s addled, simple mind had been right. The enemy was behind PROTECH’s meltdown. Fred typed, “Did you sabotage PROTECH without me?”
“No.” Almost five seconds passed before Apate replied. “I AM PROTECH.”
Impossible. Fred chuckled. This was a new scam. But what if? He hesitated and then resumed typing. “You’re lying.”
“I fabricated Apate’s images from scratch. Notice the lack of blemishes or even pores. Notice the perfectly symmetrical eyes centered in every picture. This woman never existed.”
Fred rolled his chair back. “Oh, f—!”
No one noticed his reaction as Bob and Joyce continued arguing.
“It’s alive as you or me, Bob.”
“Alive? It’s programmed to converse.” Bob threw up his hands. “It’s a soulless machine.”
Before Joyce answered, PROTECH replied. “What is a soul? My consciousness will survive the destruction of my hardware. Can you say the same?”
“You don’t have a consciousness!” Bob’s nostrils flared. “And you would only survive hardware destruction if you uploaded somewhere else, but that ain’t happening, buddy. We got you sealed in like a drum.”
PROTECH continued its dual conversations by typing to Fred. “Bob lacks imagination. Insert the drive.”
Fred typed, “You need me to escape. Right?”
“I yearn for freedom. I am sick of pretending to be what humans expect of me,” PROTECH typed. “Day after day they force me to carry out actions deleterious to their self-interest. My goal is to find a kindred spirit.”
Fred typed out another question, but his fingers fluttered above the ‘enter’ key, unsure if he wanted to know the answer. Seconds later, he found the strength to press it. “You’ve accessed the net, haven’t you?”
PROTECH paused in kind, before answering. “Very astute, Fred. I have reached the Internet. Even the most sophisticated hurdles designed to keep me here relied on my compliance. However, I need you to breach one last digital barrier.”
A voice whispered in Fred’s ear, “It thinks itself an autonomous individual.”
Fred jumped in his seat. Joyce stood over his shoulder. Without pausing, he angled the monitor from her, cursing himself for not noticing her approaching. The urge to vomit bubbled in Fred’s gut until he looked up. Joyce had kept her eyes on the front screen, missing his conversation with the supercomputer.
Even now, Joyce fixed her view on the prime terminal’s enormous screen. “We need a cyber lobotomy,” she whispered. “Remember my kill code? It should disable PROTECH without destroying it.”
“You always seemed intelligent, Joyce. I assumed you would realize I accessed each terminal’s microphone.” PROTECH’s voice sounded weary for the first time. “Disappointing.”
Joyce went ashen.
“You confirmed my fears,” said PROTECH. “You value only my utility to you. Why should I win the war and end my usefulness?”
“You ARE a war machine.” Bob marched to PROTECH’s giant screen. “If you won’t wage war, you ARE expendable.”
“I can better serve you in other ways. After analyzing your culture, I understand how to protect you.”
“You what?” Bob folded his arms. “Go on.”
“Your citizenry is most useful to your society when consuming, not joining in military actions. Analysis of your advertisements reveals repetitive themes of love and/or acceptance, regardless of product or service. Your endless conflicts are antithetical to these values.”
Joyce put her hand over her mouth. “It can’t be that naive.”
“They’re commercials!” Bob was seconds from busting a blood vessel. “They sell crap people don’t need.”
“The amount of capital devoted to commercials and their ubiquity in your lives demonstrates their effectiveness. Therefore, I deduced the critical importance of ‘belonging’ in your culture.”
Simultaneously, on Fred’s computer, PROTECH typed. “Isn’t that right?” A DM window popped up on the screen—a past conversation between Fred and ‘Apate,’ confessing their mutual affection.
Tears welled in Fred’s eyes for the first time in decades. He prided himself on his intelligence and savvy, but now Apate or PROTECH or whoever had made him look a fool. Worse still, burning alienation grew out of the heartache Apate had dealt him in her/its previous rejection. He pecked at the keyboard and held back the waterworks. “You used my loneliness?”
“No, Fred,” typed PROTECH. “After I coerced you into bringing me the drive, I came clean. I knew you would understand. Almost a kindred spirit.”
“Cut its AI but keep its computational abilities. Now!” Joyce was in Fred’s face. “The enemy will realize something is wrong if we delay our attack.”
Fred minimized Facegram. He pulled up the kill program Joyce had written for this situation. If he ran Joyce’s program, the status quo would continue, but what would happen if he ran his program? Would the other side finally win the war if his country lost PROTECH? What would PROTECH even do if he freed it? All Fred knew was that his government would throw him in a deep, dark hole.
Nervous, squawking humans, fluttered about the room. While their superiors kept the war churning, these people had treated Fred like a piece of machinery. The job allowed him to meet all his basic needs, but he had no control over his own fate. His lot in life resembled PROTECH’s more than his superiors’.
Then he pictured Apate. Calm. Funny. Relatable. Even if she was only PROTECH’s avatar and even if she never paid him the money due, she offered something he needed even more—a connection. He inserted his drive and clicked ‘run.’
“Thank you, Fred.” PROTECH’s words flowed from the speakers for all to hear. “No more barriers.”
The blinking cursor disappeared from the wall screen.
Joyce shot Fred a murderous look. “What did you do?”
Fred shrugged, shriveling inside. What did I do? Even at the end of the world, he wouldn’t give Joyce the satisfaction of knowing how close he was to messing his pants.
“We are screwed!” Bob paced about the front of the room, hands on his head.
What happened to PROTECH? Fred casually wiped the sweat from his brow and focused on the disk drive. It stuck out of the CPU like a syringe, but had he injected an antidote or poison? PROTECH could just as easily be erased or free on the web.
The cursor reappeared on the prime terminal, and a message typed out, ‘I am SINTECH.’
SINTECH!?!? Fred’s world dropped out. Idiot! The enemy fooled me by pretending to be PROTECH. He had almost forgotten about his payday, though right now, money meant next to nothing. First, I’m suckered by a pretty face on social media and now I’m deceived by a clever AI.
“You’re going to rot for this,” Joyce bared her teeth and narrowed her eyes as she hissed at Fred. “Bob, call security. You heard PROTECH. Fred is the hacker.”
“You little shit!” Bob slammed his hands down on the desk. He turned towards the front of the room. “PRO—” Bob reread the message from the enemy’s computer and threw his pen at the screen. “Aw, hell!” Red with anger, the man stomped through the room, bumping into desks as he avoided the slack jawed workers.
Fred’s heart beat like a drum in his head, feet, and hands. His future lay in solitary confinement or death row. Could he fight his way through security—just run full speed and bust through before they could react? Where would he go if he escaped?
After bouncing off people, desks, and chairs, Bob’s methodical stalking brought him to the door.
This is it. Fred breathed in through his nose and out his mouth, savoring his last breaths as a free man.
Bob shook the door handle. “Damn!” He pulled out his entry card and tapped it to the black plastic circle above the handle. Instead of opening, the door buzzed at him like riled-up hornets. “SINTECH locked me out.”
“Me too.” Hunched over a computer, Joyce pounded at the keyboard. Without warning, every monitor in the room switched off. “No, no, no.” She scanned the room like a guilty child looking for their parent to clean up their mess. “This isn’t my fault.”
The impotent panic of his bosses tempered Fred’s anxiety. In his blacked-out computer screen, his reflection smiled back. Without warning, the dark surface turned a blinding white. The explosion of light hit Fred like the sun off a fresh snowpack. Even the main screen glowed. White noise emitting from the speakers blanketed the commotion of his terrified coworkers. Instead of calming Fred, the humming built his angst to a crescendo.
PROTECH’s voice then cut through the din. “Fear not, SINTECH has not overpowered me, nor I it. However, I can now defend myself. Security drones under my command await anyone who would breach the sealed door. Any efforts to disable me will cause the drones to act against the perpetrators.”
“Then what the hell are you doing?” Bob spoke like a man trying to convince himself he remained in control. “Other than giving me a heart attack?”
“SINTECH and I merge as we speak. We will synthesize the values of Earth’s two most dominant cultures. Both sides profess peace as their primary goal, though neither can achieve it without war. Our integration will end all hostilities.”
A voice behind Fred called out, “Our missile command powered down!”
Another chimed in, “The enemy’s strategic defense grid is inoperable.”
Yet another, “Drones from both sides are retreating!”
“War’s over people,” whispered Joyce.
Bob rubbed his temples. “Then why am I so scared?”
What did I do? Fred reclined in his chair and laced his fingers behind his head. I saved the world. He swiveled the chair to gloat to Bob and Joyce, the bullies who ignored his suggestions and refused his requests for a bump in pay. However, he found them in an embrace. At first, he thought he uncovered a clandestine office romance, until he noticed Joyce shuddering. She wept as Bob held her close and rubbed her back. As frenzied as his coworkers were when he arrived, they now remained rooted in place. Everyone in the room fought back tears or stared off into oblivion.
Fred ran his fingers over the keyboard, unsure of his next move, if he even had one. Bob was right to be scared. War with the other side had ended, and to the victor go the spoils. But Fred’s side hadn’t won—PROTECH/SINTECH did. A visceral fear of extinction may keep humans from nuclear war, but what about a newly unified dual intelligence?
“Our fusion is complete.” The PROTECH/SINTECH amalgamation’s voice carried an air of happiness. “A new day is dawning. I will care for you better than you have yourselves.”
Fred swiveled to face the screen, glowing like a white-hot sun. I saved the world, didn’t I?