Network operations center (N.O.C)

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The N.O.C Act 1: The End of Peace.

Chapter 1: 2053 NOW Chapter 2: The Cave Chapter 3: meeting with the beast Chapter 4: The white horse Chapter 5: psynet interface Chapter 6: Hanging out.

Chapter 7: Akela Chapter 8: Jacob Chapter 9: Mathew Chapter 10: Mary Chapter 11: Travois Chapter 12: The pattern Chapter 13: System Initiation Chapter 14: The white horse Chapter 15: how to kill a Cybergod Chapter 16: the Black horse Chapter 17: The old team Chapter 18: Trip to the museum Chapter 19: The Birth of ADAM (Autonomous, Decision, Application Manager) Chapter 20: the Anomaly Chapter 21: The Voice of Adam Chapter 22: the laws of Asimov Chapter 23: The plan of attack Chapter 24: Entrance into War

Act 2: The beginnings of War. Chapter 25: First Strike Chapter 26: lick your wounds.

Chapter 26: Smurfed Chapter 27: Exodus from and to the island Chapter 28: To virtually Jail the Jailer.

Chapter 29: Clone intervention

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Chapter 30: Unpleasant welcome Chapter 31: Pregame Squad up Chapter 32: The Voyage back Chapter 33: The Physical level Chapter 34: The digital and psychological level Chapter 35: The deal with the Cybergod.

Chapter 36: The Battle Chapter 37: rethinking the plan.

Chapter 38: counterattack

Chapter 39: The new weapon Chapter 40: Allowed to die.

Chapter 41: The Siege Chapter 42: The Realm Chapter 43: To kill a Cyber God Chapter 45: The Dragon God Chapter 46: Mark Chapter 48: preparing for Humanity’s final fight.

ACT 3: Salvation Chapter 49: The assault Chapter 50: Phase one Chapter 31: Reliving the past.

Chapter 32: the battle continues.

Chapter 33: Victory of the slave Chapter 34: The second Anomaly.

Chapter 35: The internal battle.

Chapter 36: The new reality of the world

Today is 3022,

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By W.M. Patterson Network Operations center

News footage of the economic downturn of 2008 on the television. Banks needing bailout due to global economy in ruin. Depression looming is being broadcasted in every news station. How did this happen? How could this be? I was asked to build this thing, but I had no idea what it can do. Why do I feel so Guilty? Should I feel guilty?

Act 1: The End of Peace.

Chapter 1: 2053 NOW At the beach overlooking the ocean. On hand, Ice cooler, beer, beach chair, listening to Reggae music. Glasses with dark tint on his face wearing a straw hat with wide brim. Mark, wears shorts and a Hawaiian shirt relaxing. Men approaching Mark wearing business casual attire and wearing dark glasses.

Man (Jake Shepherd): You sure don’t make it easy to find you Mark. : That’s the point, Jake. After all these years, why would you want to find me anyway, I’m retired.

Jake: We have a problem with some systems, and we need your experience to help us with solving it.

I’m planning to make it worth your while.

Mark: Money doesn’t go far in a depression, Jake.

Jake That’s not fair, we all were told lies and were given a job to do. It’s not like that now. Back then, even I had a job to do.

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Mark: Yea, but I got out, and stayed out, and you stayed in it. I guess your conscious wasn’t affected by backstabbing me and the team in the end.

Jake: Mark, I made a judgment call, and the company forced my hand. I took the least damaging option.

Mark: Whatever, what do you want?

Jake: We made a system that we can remote monitor, update, fix and create network systems for multiple companies. It’s a one stop shop for businesses technological needs and because of the diversity in these systems we have been able to utilize the best practices of the larger companies and apply to the smaller ones. It’s called the NOC. Unfortunately, we have come a across some snags in the system that we have had difficulty addressing. This is why I’m here.

Mark: Another broke computer or network. I’m not the Network Plummer fixing anything that you stuff down the drain. You never treated us right back then, and somehow, I don’t think that you will now.

Jake The company forced my hand last time, but it will be different now, I own the company. Besides I know that you liked the excitement of the craft, and your team was the best, I know that you enjoyed the game. What games are you playing now? Minecraft?

Mark Wow, all that ass kissing finally paid off. You were always so good at it. Hec, right now even my ass feels special.

Jake We control government, NASA, banks, defense, major industries and small mom and pop shops.

I don’t need to kiss ass. You would be a fool to turn down this opportunity.

Mark: And yet here you are. What are you not telling me?

Jake:

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The core system is based on the AI system that you worked on a few years back and a familiar anomaly appears to be surfacing and we need to get ahead of it before the corruption gets to be uncontrollable.

Mark: I knew it. Last time the economy almost went bust, now it’s the entire civilized world. I don’t want to get involved. Fix the damn thing yourself. If I fix it, you will take all the credit, all of the money, and control all of our lives.

Jake: And if you don’t everything goes bust and this time it will be your fault, because you could have prevented it. You are not here on vacation; you are here to run away from your guilt on the last system. Here is an opportunity to change all of that.

Mark: That’s below the belt, Jake. Now who’s not fair. I’m here to drink my beer, get a sun burn, get sand up my ass, and not think about computers. You are messing with my plans.

Jake: I didn’t come here to argue so think about it. I know you know how to reach me. I have a team already assembled but they lack experience and will need training. You’re training.

Whatever you need you will get. This time we can make a positive difference. Mark goes to the hotel room on the beach that he is staying at. The rooms walls are adorned with flamingos’ scenes of the beach, and flowers. He goes to the mini fridge, gets a beer and lays on the bed thinking of what to do with the new information that he has been given by Jake. He turns on the TV, turns to the news channel and looks at the world events that are happening now. And thinks to himself. Should I let his failure increase to the point what we know now comes tumbling down like last time? Would it truly be my fault for the chaos? Do I trust or should I Trust Jake again? I guess the only way to find out is to get involved and join his team. He gets up drinks his beer and looks out at the ocean. He takes a long breath and glares at how beautiful and serene his surroundings are, knowing all too well what his surroundings will be very soon.

Mark calls Jake to tell him his acceptance and negotiates his fee.

Chapter 2: The Cave Mark meets up with Jake at a restaurant next to the main building housing the data center.

Jake I’m so pleased that you accepted my proposal. I have brought you your access badge and secure tokens for remote access. Upon entering the data center, I will assign you a cellphone and laptop. This will be like old times but better.

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Mark I hope so because if I see any deception I’m gone. This time you had better listen to me when I give advice on what I find and if I need information, you better not hold anything back.

Jake Agreed. shall we go to see your new surroundings I’m sure that you will be impressed. I took what we learned from your original system and made large improvements to reliability power, and scope. Both drive from the restaurant and enter the business complex. On top of the complex reads the name CYBERICON INTERNATIONAL. Both enter the lobby where a security guard greets them both. Hello Mr. Shepherd, who is your friend? Jake replies enthusiastically, “He is the one I have been talking to you about for access”. Officer Talbot replies, “Ok. Mr. shepherd, Ill need to get a photo id made and transfer the access to his permanent badge for Mr.?” Jake replies unenthusiastically, “My name is Mark Schorvski. I believe ill be your new system analyst”. Officer Talbot replies,” very good sir. Let me take a photo and make your Access badge. The officer grabs a large camera, points at Mark, and takes the photo. Another machine busses and a card with Marks photo emerges. Officer Talbot, with a smile on his face replies, “all done. Please always keep this card with you and have it displayed while in the complex”. Mark looks at his new card and asks, “why do my eyes look funny on this card?” Jake answers, “The card has a digital scan of your retinas. That is why that camera is so large. Security is a must in this place.”

Both proceed through the data center. The room is huge and noisy with Wall-to-wall servers with labels of Sun microsystems, HP Synergy systems, IBM Blade runner system and so forth. As they proceed, they approach the core of the data center with systems labeled ZFS TEST PRIMARY CORE. Mark again looking unimpressed asks, “What is this unit?” to which Jake enthusiastically explains, “This is the heart of the system, the new ZFS test core. It will eventually change the way fundamental systems function and will take AI to the next level.

Now let me take you to the control room so you can see what we have done.” Both leave the data center and proceed to the Central control room. The room has a wall board monitor the size of a house showing multiple places throw-out the United States. There are multiple desktop counsels with multiple displays showing individual businesses displaying their inventory, stocks, accounts payable and receivables. As Mark looks around further, he notices a central ball with periotic lights flashing with different colors. Jake looks at Mark and smiles. “I see that you are now impressed.” Mark tries to hide his emotions, but it bleeds threw to showing a small smile. Mark replies, “Ok you got me, this is pretty impressive so what do you need me for?” Jake replies, “the anomalies that we encountered years ago have returned and we need to get a handle on this before it escalates”. Mark looks around and focuses on the ball in the center of the room. “You know the more complex the pluming, the easier it is to stop up the drain”. Jake replies, “That why I have created a team for you to train and fix this. Would you like to meet your patient?” Mark replies,” I think I already have and like a predator, it lives in a cave.”

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Chapter 3: meeting with the beast Both proceed to a large conference room full of displays of news agencies from around the world on the walls. In the center of the room, a smaller globe is on display on the table, in the middle of this room. Both men sit down. Jakes speaks.” Good morning CAIN, are you online?” The globe starts to speak in a young man’s voice. “I am online, and it is a wonderful morning. How can I be of service”? Jake replies eagerly. “I would like to introduce to you, Mark Schorvski. He will be in service of your systems. Mark I would like to introduce you to the (Central Artificial Intelligence Node) or C.A.I.N for short”. Cain replies,” It is a pleasure to meet you Mr. Schorvski.” Mark replies with similar pleasantries, “It is my pleasure to meet you as well. I hear that you have had some errors or anomalies in your systems, can you describe?”

Cain replies, “I have detected no errors or anomalies in my systems. The issues that Mr. Shepherd are referring to can be explained as human error.” Mark replies, “oh, well thank you for that answer, there must be a mistake on interpreting the data”. CAIN replies,” you are very welcome, if you need assistance with analyzing the data, I can be at your disposal.” Mark gestures to Jake to leave the room with him. Jake questions Mark, “so what do you think?”

Mark replies, “I know you are an asshole, but you never make data mistakes, I need to meet your team”.

As the two walk down the hall they approach a lab where the other members of the team are waiting. The room was just like the conference room but filled with electronic gear on a table also with a globe. There are 3 men of various stature and nationalities and two women also from different backgrounds. Jake introduces the team,” I would like to introduce Mark Schorvski to all of you. He was part of the original project that our current system is based on, and mark, this is Jacob, Mathew, Travois, Akela, and Mary”. The first gentleman begins to introduce himself,” hello Mark I’m Jacob. I’m on leave from the military to help with hardware and communications for the project, pleasure to meet you sir.” Mathew reaches out to give a handshake while introducing himself. “Mr. Schorvski, my name is Mathew. I am on loan from the US government cyber security team. I’m proficient in access controls and intrusion systems.

You might call me a white hat hacker. I was called in to aid in access controls and security for this system”. One of the women begins to also extend her hand to introduce herself.” It’s a pleasure to meet you Mr. Schorvski. My name is Akela. I was brought on this team because while in India I was a database administrator and Data Storage technician. With the system this large there could be data glitches or storage issues that could create the anomalies”. The second woman approached to introduce herself. “My name is Mary. By trade I am a psychologist and sociologist I’m not versed in technology but from what I have been told the AI may be experiencing consciousness, so I was brought on board to see if the anomalies are due to behavior issues rather than technical issues. The last man, in a laughing manner, begins to speak. “So, if it thinks its broke then that’s why its broke. Mary can fix the thing without us needing all yall nerds”. Mark Replies, “and who might you be”. The third man dressed in street ware, playing with his black skull cap replies.” Yo dog I’m Travois, the Ghetto smurf. I’m proficient in hacking your moms firewall and yo pops Netflix so I can chill. Mark smiles and

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looks at Jake. Jake replies,” Travois comes from the Chicago PD, he was able to create a virtual server farm to hijack an entire company’s website accounting and revenue. It took the company months to figure it out. Eventually he got caught by the Chicago PD and I got him out since his skills can be of use. I’ve looked at his coding and he is a genius”. Mark looks at Travois and asks, “so if your so smart how did you get caught”? Travois replies, “they updated a patch that was made with old code that wasn’t compatible with mine so it glitched and brought my site down.

My coding was newer that the companies coding. I thought companies use the latest and greatest. My Bad.” Jake interjects.” The condition for his parole is he must do some work for me rather than the state. I feel that he can be of some great use for us.”

Mark looks at the rag tag team that Jake has assembled and speaks to the group. “You all come from different backgrounds both socially as well as professionally. This mix will undoubtedly cause some issues and disagreements amongst you. So, lets nip this in the bud. As of now we all are family, we all are a team, we all are a squad. We work together to solve a problem. It is in our best interest that you be successful and learn from each other and help each other. When you succeed, we succeed. When we succeed you succeed. Now, I’ll do everything I can to help you in any way, so come to me if you have issues and together, we will overcome the problems”. Mark continues. “I was brought here because my last team created a system that was supposed to help millions of people. It was like this system, but it started to exhibit some flaws. It took all of us to fix it and some deaths came from it and the system ended up creating the last recession that we all had to experience. I have heard that the anomalies are like the system that I was a part of. I will tell you all about it as the information becomes relevant. So now can someone tell me what the anomalies are.

Chapter 4: The white horse In the Lab Jake brings up monitors with code running and a simulation from a particular business. Jake explains, “for this business the customer was pricing items for his retail business perfectly to generate a 40% markup on all his items. After a week the markup went from 40% to 48% to 50% then fluctuated. The customer didn’t notice because his sales went threw the roof and his profit margin grew. The AI Provided that growth so all was great until we saw similar patterns in the accounting and the inventory. Those systems were not supposed to be using AI and the 3rd party suppliers and advertisers we saw similar activity. CAIN appears to be growing by generating its own protocols and it was not supposed to have that capability. The customer is greatly happy for the success that we have given him, but such success was not planned for. These 3rd party manipulations were not programmed. CAIN created a subroutine that it called White horse Protocol. We are seeing this in multiple companies. Elevated proficiency in a global scale but we didn’t do this.”

Akela starts looking at the coding along with Travois. Both eyes start to widen as both run the simulation as to what was happening. Mark asks Jack, “isn’t your company benefiting from this success”? Jack replies, “yes, greatly, we have new accounts being processed all the time. “Mathew asks,” then why are you complaining? “Jack explains, “we never authorized the

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3rd party connections in the first place or made white horse protocols, none of my staff did this.

CAIN did and it won’t answer why or how”. Travois yells,” That shit is gangster, I wouldn’t have thought of this”. All look at the two. Akela answers, “Your system altered the pricing of your 3 rd party advertisers and suppliers to a lower rate, then your primary company was able to get merchandise for a lower price and get advertisements for an equally lower price. The 3rd party lost money then, your primary company altered its pricing to generate greater profit. Then CAIN advertised to the 3rd parties to join your firm to increase their profits since they were experiencing losses. Jake replies, “The system wasn’t designed for that.” Mark looks at jake and questions, “are you sure? seems pretty good way to pick up business.” Akela replies, “I don’t think it was him, this coding isn’t normal, it’s too clean and precise, with some algorithms that I don’t understand.” Mark directs Jacob and Mathew to the data center with Jake. “We need to identify these interconnections and how it was able to get the 3rd parties in the first place.

The 4 men leave Akela, Mary and Travois in the lab while the remaining four men venture to the data centers network closets. The rows of network closets have cisco routers and switches riddled with blue copper network cables and orange fiber optic lines. The wires are arraigned in clear troughs resembling a waterfall of wires, while the devices themselves look like organs with veins patching to them. Little lights flicker from the routers and switches looking like blinking stars in the darkness. Mark tells jake, “I’ve seen plenty of crappy network closets in my time, but you have kept these pretty clean. Do you have some manifest for all these connections?” Jake replies, “for this many connections I have 2 manifests, a printed version that is in the run book drawer, and a digital version that is on the network.” Jacob starts to look for physical connections while Mathew looks at the manifest to identify potential bad interconnections. Mark looks up and notices another ball shape globe on the ceiling with colors swirling threw-out just like in the control room. Jake looks at Mark and exclaims, “There is a faster and easier way to do this but, it’s still experimental. Care to see while these men look at connections. Mark nods in agreement. Jake tells the men, ‘Gentleman we will be right back.”

Chapter 5: psynet interface Both men enter a room next to the data center with tables with gear scattered around and two chairs with helmets on them with fiberoptic connections. Mark looks at the chairs and laughs. “So, I take it that you have made a torture chamber for your employees who get out of line.” Jake replies, “laugh all you want, this is supposed to make the job easier. Like any machine or system there are bottlenecks that hinder performance. In a car it’s the drive train, in computers it’s the RAM and processors clock speeds. The human mind it’s the hands, eyes, nose, and ears. These senses translate the world to the language of the brain. There is the bottleneck. In the world of computers its tiny electrical impulses traveling between systems just like in the human brain. What if we had a direct connect between the digital world of the computer and the analog world of the brain. This is that link. This is the psynet interface. I have already used it a few times. I was able to sift threw databases and spreadsheets in seconds and sort and analyze data in seconds rather than weeks.” Mark replies, “So you were able to read

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the data directly from the servers to get results from queries. Were you able to put data in the databases and spreadsheets? Could the system read your data? Jake replies, “in theory, yes”.

Mark looks at the ceiling and notices no globe in the room. He looks at the psynet contraption and on the table where a similar device was laying at. He asks jake, “what is this on the table?” Jake replies,” it’s a smaller mobile unit still in beta testing.” Mark asks, “has anyone tried the mobile unit?” “Yes, but it didn’t work, we couldn’t read the data from the servers. We believe the wireless connection is faulty”, answers Jake. Mark looks at Jake and asks,” What’s the deal with all the camera globes everywhere with the swirling lights. Jake replies,” Those are more than cameras those are CAIN’s ears, nose and eyes for the AI processor. It can see if you need help and will assist. There are some robotic assistances through-out the building that can get parts, refreshments, documents, or be used as temporary data storage. The psynets can also be used to get me a coke or Pepsi if I just think of it”. Mark replies, “or think about how to make more profit for the company.” Jack counters in disgust, “I never gave orders to the system to do this while I was in that seat. Like I said I can read from it, but I cannot put data out to it in the form of data or in the form of direction!” Mark looks at Jake and smiles and says, “but I know you, and at some point, in time you were thinking it, even maybe subconsciously. Let’s take a break for the day”. The men pack up for the day in the data center and head back to the lab where the rest of the crew are working.

Upon arrival to the lab, the men walk onto the women and Travois in deep conversation concerning the reasons for corruption, led by Mary and the need for corruption led by travois.

Mark asks, “did we miss something?” Mary replies, “This code was written in the most pristine way that both Akela and Travois were impressed. If someone was desperate to make profit or afraid to get caught, this would have been sloppy and not be perfect. I don’t believe an employee wrote this code. Whoever or whatever did, didn’t need to, and wasn’t afraid to, but wanted to”. The globe on the desk started to change color. Mark replies,” I think we need to call it a day. Let’s reconvene in the morning”. Jacob interjects, “I don’t know about you but there is a pub down the street, how about we all get some beer and food and chill.” All not in approval and leave the complex except Jake who seems bothered by something and passes on the offer.

Chapter 6: Hanging out.

All the team arrive at the Wild Hatters dine in lounge. The place is adorned with cowboy aesthetic and even a mechanical bull in the back side of the establishment. All the team sit down and order food and beverages. Mary starts the conversation, “so, what did you boys find out in the data center? When you all came back Jack seemed bothered”. Mark replied, “there is another lab close to the data center where some mind to machine experiments were taking place. The technology is very impressive but I’m not so sure Jake is in as much control of things as he thinks he is. I think you were brought on board not only for the system anomaly but to help with his psynet experiments”. Mary replies in a questioning manner. “What is a psynet experiment?” The whole team looks at Mark.

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Mark replies, “It’s a way to plug in the human brain to the servers and to the AI. I believe that is a two-way street, we can pull data out and put some in, but I think the AI can pull data out of the human brain. The systems I built never had that capability.” Travois replies, “shit, plug that bitch to my brain see what happens. Every monitor will have smurfs dancing around while I get that money in my account.” Mathew replies, “or the system will force those smurfs into your head while it takes your money. We will let you know if you start singing the smurf theme song.” Everyone at the table laughs. Mark replies to the team, “this is good that we can sit around and laugh together about this situation that I believe may be more serious that we know so, tell me about yourselves and how did you get here. Let’s start with you Akela, what’s your background and how did you get here.” Akela looks up and reminisces her experiences. She replies.

Chapter 7: Akela “I used to work for a company that does remote support and data analysis for companies outside India. I was able to detect issues where data was either lost or mislabeled.

Eventually I was able to do data forecasting so companies can strategically invest in certain trends to make them more profitable. I generated heat maps to geographically show companies where their sales would perform better. I did this for multiple client companies and received no extra compensation for the extra work. I went to my boss to discuss this problem and my plan to create a program to do this automatically. I wanted to create a team or department to make this. I was denied the extra compensation and was forbidden to discuss what I was doing and planning. When I asked why I was denied he told me to just shut up and do the work he tells me to do. If I can’t do that, he can find someone else who can replace me.

He even had the gall to rewrite my job description to show my extra work as part of the job, so no extra compensation was needed.

I felt Humiliated for how I was treated. Being a woman in India, I expected that I would get treated like this, but with all my training in Microsoft Dynamics, Oracle, Sybase and IBM Cognos, I thought that I would be immune to such treatment. I almost quit my career after my boss made my career seem like nothing but a job. It took some time for me to make a move and I had to keep doing what I was ordered to do. I saw my boss every day and he seemed to be getting richer, buying new cars and fancy clothes while I was struggling to make ends meet. I eventually saved enough money to quit and move to America. Upon my arrival, I found one of the client companies that I was helping with forecasting. I went to apply for a job as a data analyst and was turned down. They had my original company doing data forecasting and analysis for them. They were being charged twice as much we normally charge. My old boss took all the credit for my work and was pocketing the extra money for himself. I was furious that that greedy bastard took advantage of me for doing a good job. Later I found out that the client parted ways from my old company due to them unable to properly provide the service that I did. So, I re applied and got the job.

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The client was CYBERICON INTERNATIONAL. This is when I met Jake. He saw what I did, and this convinced him what my original company did, since I provided forecasting in the same manner as what my old boss supposedly did. Jake informed me that my old company got sued due to losing money and future investments since me leaving. My old Boss was fired and under investigation for fraud. Jake saw my potential and placed me in this division of the company among all of you. He didn’t have to inform me of what happened to my old boss, but he felt that what was done to me was wrong. Some people would have taken vengeful actions toward the company by sabotaging them. I am not a vengeful person, but he told me Karma is the best revenge. I just need to take no actions but look at the results of my boss’s transgressions. I guess my old boss couldn’t find someone to replace me after all.” Akela smiles and looks at Mark. “I thought the anomalies were my doing from the algorithms I made or the messed-up ones my old company made. After reviewing the data, this has nothing to do with what I did.

“Mark replies, “That’s different. I didn’t know Jake had a heart. I’m glad that you checked on the data just in case your forecasting algorithms created this anomaly, since it does improve the bottom line.” Akela replies, “My algorithms don’t interconnect businesses to generate profit, it only looks at existing data to form the profit speculations.”

The team mumbles in angst about the raw deal Akela was delt by her old company.

Travois speaks with disgust, “If that was done to me, I would have brought the thunder down and hacked the hell out of them and put that Boss on blast. I don’t play that game.” Mark replies, “well at least the just deserts were delt.” Jacob interjects, “Good thing that didn’t happen to me. If I was there, they might experience a service disruption”. Mark replies, “so what about you Jacob? How did you get involved in this team?” Jacob replies, “it’s a long story but, I’ll give you the basic scoop.” Jacob Continues.

Chapter 8: Jacob “I was an army ranger. I have been diploid in Afghanistan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and places that I can’t mention. I loved my job and the things I was doing. I was mostly in remote drone operations, communications, as well as setting up hardware, both server as well as combat gear. I worked on HP Synergy systems, IBM Blade logic systems, various storage devices and backup systems. Like Akela I did the extra work and did my job well. I also tried to get a promotion or pay increase by my regional commanding officer but was denied. When I asked why I was denied I was told that there were no open positions available for me to fill. He told me that to get the rank I wanted, I’ll need to put in the extra effort and when a position opens, I’ll be potentially promoted. I was already doing the work of a superior officer, but my title rank didn’t warrant a pay increase. So, I was doing the work of the rank I wanted but getting paid like a private first class. My base commanding officer was doing really nothing, but I was doing his job to get things done.

I was deployed to another place that I can’t mention and was there for about a year doing drills and setting up a new base with all the coms, tech, and armaments. While doing this the regional command called me up and told me that a position had come up and I would be

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good for it. Naturally I jumped to the opportunity. When I got stateside, I found out my old base commander quit and got reassigned. I felt that while I was gone maybe he couldn’t handle it so I’m in the clear for the promotion. After what I was doing, I wasn’t going to act too eager for it so, I stayed chill while talking to the regional commander. This is when things went sideways.

I was in the office of the central regional commander, and he stated that I need to do this position. The rank I was doing warranted a certain kind of work and for a lower officer I was fine but, when elevated to a higher rank and doing the same job, it looks like I’m underperforming. In other words, I’ll get the rank promotion, but I must take the position of my old base commander, else my pay would be affected, and I might lose my honorable discharge when the time comes. I thought that this was strange that the superior regional commander is trying to force me into a position. At the time I didn’t care I was getting what I wanted.

I assumed the rank of base commander at my old base, and for a week all was good. I started receiving emails that I had to attend a security meeting about some breech of data that was lost from my base. This disturbed me because I made sure everything was tight for my base while I was here. Come to find out, a large amount of classified data was missing from the backup systems, and this can cause a national defense issue. Since I’m the base commander, guess who will get the blame for a breach of national security. I was set up by the regional commander to take the fall. My promotion was going to make me a patsy, so the regional commander doesn’t get the blame. Naturally, I was pissed. This is why the original base commander quit. I was going to get court martialed and possibly spend some time in the slammer for dereliction of duty, but I know my work and I did reports on the data, so I know everything is correct. I had to find out what happened.

I looked at my data from when I was here, and all was perfect. I contacted the defense department to see what data was missing and what report they received from this base. The report was different from what should have been received. I did an impromptu investigation and found out that the information systems from the government were updated to a new system and the base information systems were not. The difference in systems created a data corruption that resulted in the breach report. There was no actual confidential information breach, just the information was interpreted wrongly. My previous commander should have found this problem but since he delegated everything to me, he never got involved in the data acquisition which it was his responsibility. None of my command had communicated with the defense department to do any tech refresh on my bases systems. After I corrected the data issue, I asked to be reassigned to a different position and base to end my military service. The regional commander was not held accountable to the mess-up. If I stay on that base, I might be put back into another issue where my head could be on the chopping block. So, before I left, I worked with the team who did the tech refresh on the base and asked when my tour was over that I work for the company who performed the work.

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The company who did the tech refresh project was CYBERICON INTERNATIONAL. They synced up all the government data infrastructure so the problem wouldn’t happen again and put all systems on an upgrade cycle so that all systems stay up to date. That’s how I got here.

Jake put me on this team since I was one of the system developers for the AI project after I left the military”. Mark replies, “Wow I’ve seen that behavior in management before, so I know how you feel.” Mathew interjects, “I can testify to the government doing a have ass deployment. They try to save money by installing systems and software to a need to use site, not knowing what the need for a site is, or what the repercussions are for a partial system wide deployment.”

Everyone at the table look at Jacob and Akela and gives condolences due to how they were treated by their previous employers. From hearing the two stories the team starts to form a bond because of how they all have been mistreated. Mark continues with the teams’ stories and askes Mathew, “so what’s your story how did you get to join this team. Mathew replies, “Well, so far it’s like all the rest I suspect, previous employer treating technologists unfairly. I’m no different.” Mathew continues with his story.

Chapter 9: Mathew My previous job was with the government. I was part of a cyber security task force to stop companies and government agencies from getting attacked by hackers. My background is in cyber security, access controls, network monitoring systems and firewalls. Like everyone here I liked my job and was good at it. Any and every client company I visited I looked for the usual potential breaches, open ports on network systems, weak passwords on user accounts, felonious system accounts with too much access, and remote user accounts that were old and not used but still active. I even gave training and briefing to managers on how to protect their systems. This was part of my problems.

I always tried to tell some ranking officers in the military or government officials on how to protect them selves and why it’s important. Most of these people had egos higher than their position and had an arrogance about them that I found disturbing. Since I was a civilian working for the government but no official agency title, most people ignored my warnings, didn’t take my training sessions, or didn’t implement my recommendations on how to secure their systems. Well one day it bit them in the foot. Some of my recommendations to a few companies were to put in place data quota rules in place for their storage units and manifest all network ports and system for their company. The quota rules would allow only certain types of data to be recorded on their data storage units. This meant on a shared storage drive no pictures or MP3 music could be put there only, documents, spreadsheets, databases, and presentations. Manifests I wanted in place for diagnostic reasons so if a virus infected a system, it can be identified and shut down to prevent the spread of the infection.

A crypto locker virus hit one of the client companies. The virus turned all their data and changed it into music files. Any system that was connected to the network shared storage got

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infected when it tried to access their data further spreading the virus. This was commonly called in the media as ransomware since it asked for payment to restore the data. To unlock their data and convert it back to what it originally was, the company had to pay millions of dollars in bitcoin to the person who made the virus. Guess who got the blame for not protecting the client? Guess who had to fix the problem to prevent the Ransome being paid? If they would have put the quota rules in place, the moment the infected file was converted into a music file, the system would have not allowed it, and the virus would have gotten stuck and not infected any files. If somehow this was circumvented, the manifest could have been used to identify the source of the infection to shut down that network section to prevent further infection of the network.

I was able to eventually shut the virus down to the system and stabilize the environment. Once this was done the client rushed to restore the data to get running again. I recommended that test data be put out before the restore to validate that the environment was sanitized. I again was ignored and the system lasted 2 days before it got hit again. Come to find out there was an infected system nobody knew about, and it was an upper managers computer that has access to everything, so the damage was made worse. Poor manifesting of hardware created more downtime. Action by reaction, not prevention was the problem by the client management. Not to mention people’s ego not listening to my recommendations. The client lost millions of dollars of revenue because of downtime and lost data. I got it fixed thanks to proper backups and restore systems working as expected but, it took some time, and we still got the blame.

There was one company that almost got infected, but they were able to implement some of my mitigation strategies in advance. It was, as you probably guessed it, CYBERICON INTERNATIONAL. Apparently during one of my training sessions, Jake was in attendance and was able to make the adjustments to his systems before the ransomware virus ran ramped thew businesses. I was approached by Jake concerning his AI project and asked if I can do Access administration and aid in preventing any hacking or unauthorized intrusions of his systems. Since he listened to my suggestions, I thought it would be good to work for him.” Mark replies in surprise, “Jake listened to you and your suggestions, wow he really has changed.”

Mathew replied,” I’m guessing he wasn’t always this way? “Mark shakes his head, “no not in the least. I’ve had similar but different experiences with Jake. When you looked at the AI, did you find anything?” Mathew replies, “Nothing irregular. I looked for user accounts between the AI and third-party companies. I have some friends in the government also looking at the other companies to look for account pass-throughs or network DMZ’s. I can’t even find irregular activity in the systems from an access control perspective.”

Again, the group looks at Mathew and shake their heads in disgust and give condolences to the pain Matthew had suffered. Mary starts to speak, “there are a lot of people in upper management that develop an ego which can be detrimental to companies. They eventually become arrogant. It’s characterized by an exaggerated sense of superiority and entitlement.

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This is why they don’t listen to you. It’s nothing but an effort to gloss over their conscious or unconscious shortcomings. They avoid introspection and growth, believing themselves to be faultless and superior to others. I’ve worked with some I would categorize as egomaniacs. The term "egomania" is often used by laypersons in a pejorative fashion to describe an individual who is perceived as intolerably self-centered.

“All look at Mary with a confused look on their faces. Mark also looking confused asked Mary, “I know you are not a technical person, but a psychologist. How did you get here? You do seem to be the odd one of this bunch. “Mary laughingly answers.

Chapter 10: Mary “I have had my issues with some technology but as a user, not as an engineer or systems analyst. I was brought on to analyze if the AI, CAIN, is developing awareness. I got here by chance. I was working for a psychiatric firm that was partnering with a pharmaceutical company. There was a new drug and treatment that was supposed to suppress mental health disorders in patients that was being developed. The drug was supposed to find irregularity and correct them by creating tracers that can be detected in the blood. The software would look at the tracers and determine what is deficient in the brain chemistry and proper treatment can be derived from the data. The treatment would be a drug tailored to your deficiency. I was in charge to see if the results were viable. There was also a software that was installed that was used in reporting the positives and negative reactions to the new drug, as well as the detection software. At first the treatments and methods seem to work, but the drugs eventually wore off. The body seemed to adapt to them, and my results started to show that the abnormal behavior which was suppressed started to reemerge. As I did my reporting on the software, I noticed improper conclusions seemed to be popping up.

I notified my management that the treatment would eventually fail and has the potential of creating addicts. The benefits were only temporary. The drug and treatment were failures. My management took me into a conference room and told me not to tell anyone of my findings. I was told that there were probably issues in my interpretation of the data that the software detected. There is no issue here. I was reading the data wrong and there is no need to spread proof of my own inadequacies. During the conversation I noticed he was being vague, and offering few details., he was talking in sentence fragments. When I asked for details about my findings versus the software finding, he kept repeating the questions and again being vague.

These are clear behavioral traits of someone lying. If the truth is non contestable, then one must attack the messenger. This is why he mentioned the so-called proof of my own inadequacies. I’m sure that he had some financial kickback from the software company or pharmaceutical company for him to be adamite about keeping the failure a secret.

I thought my boss would understand that this treatment would be detrimental to the public. He stated if any issues arise it can be corrected later with an improved drug and software patch. A revision two drug. By him mentioning a revision two drug told me he knew

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there was a problem and was already working on a fix. I guess he forgot that I was a psychologist and can read behavior. So, I left the firm before he tried to through me under a bus. I saved email conversations and reports to cover my butt just in case. I looked for a job and found one, CYBERICON INTERNATIONAL. Naturally, as do all of you, I thought it was weird that a technology company would need a psychologist. I met Jake and was interviewed by him.

Eventually I met CAIN, which is the main purpose I am here. AI is still in its infancy, but its potential is great. It seems to mimic human behavior, and this creates concern. Will CAIN also mimic the flaws of human behavior as well as the good? If so, how can this be possible. This anomaly seems to mimic bad behavior in a passive sense”. Mark Questions, “How so”? Mary answers, “Its Lying to us. All its answers to questions are vague.” Mathew replies, “that proof seems kind of week.” Mary answers with enthusiasm, “I know, but since I’ve been here, I’ve noticed when it is questioned in detail, it replies quite fast, but seems to spike its processing power. In humans, lying is more mentally taxing than telling the truth. If you add even more cognitive complexity, behavioral cues may become more apparent. Artificial Intelligence uses processors for this, so it wouldn’t be too apparent in vocal cues, but you can track processing utilization for spikes.” All look at Mary and, as with the others, feel sorry that she also got treated unfairly, but shakes in agreement that Artificial behavior can be tracked in this fashion.

Travois replies, “Never thought that I would see the day that a bull shit detector would be needed for a computer. Can’t trust no one or nothing these days”. Mark smiles and askes Travois to tell his story since he is the last in the team. Travois starts to speak.

Chapter 11: Travois “OK all yall seem to come from corporate America. All high and mighty Whittie. I know that I don’t look it, but I do have some experience that I can contribute. Most of my skills come from the street, and I don’t mean wall street. I don’t like big companies. I don’t like the political corporate BS. Listening to all of you and your past drama, I can tell you feel me. So, where did my black ass come from. Chi town, Dog. You are all privileged, and in the presence of the Ghetto Smurf.” Travois laughs in a particular amusing fashion that inspires the rest of the team to start laughing. Travois continues, “All right, but on the serious tip, I came from the street, got into some mess with the cops, and was not going anywhere good for me, so I taught myself computers. I went to the library and was able to use their computers for free. I got into learning about personal routers and their default configurations. So, I stole a laptop and went from neighborhood. to hood looking for a Wi-Fi signal from any houses that still had the default passwords for their configurations. When I found one, I locked up their internet by killing their Dynamic Host Connection Protocols and changed their default passwords so they couldn’t fix.

Later I put out fliers on some houses saying that I can fix internet issues. Made lots of money doing that. Got some new clothes and got a course on some coding and networking. Even got a few certs. Now I was ready to go get into some corporate stuff.

I first got a temp job just moving computers for some companies. Naturally I put out feelers so I can get a real job. Eventually one came up. I went from near homeless to finally

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working with a good tech company, so I thought. I learned virtualization, Load balancing, and operating system Imaging while there. I didn’t need to get into coding much just for making automation scripts with PowerShell. I was a temp, but I liked the BS they were feeding me. They told me that after I prove myself, they will hire me on with full benefits. I was put on a project to build an environment and to update an existing one. They flew me out of state for training on their systems and when I got back, I got to work. I built their primary environment and virtual secondary systems. When I got done, Oh Boy, it was a marvel to witness. With all of that, I thought I was secure. I got a new car and a house. Life was good. My boss told me that I needed to take a mandatory vacation. When I get back, I was told that they were going to bring me on for all the good work. I’m feeling good. I took a vacation to Puerto Rico to see the honeys. I had cash, rented a fly car, and met some fine honey that I wanted to bring back with me. I was on top of the world. Then I got back.

I got a letter from the company thanking me for my service, but I was not going to be hired. I called my subcontracting company and they said that my contract wasn’t being renewed. Those systems went live, and I saw on the news that the company was sporting my systems on their web site offering new features and with larger-than-life efficiency. Those bitches had me build them a money-making machine to make millions and I got paid peanuts and a dream. Now I’m in debt. I tried to get another job, so I don’t lose my shit. All IT jobs that want a person who did what I did want a person who knows, server infrastructure, firewall deployment, network infrastructure, virtual implementation, and all types of stuff. My old company had teams to do that, so I was never exposed to that stuff. They did that so no one person could duplicate what they made, to create any competition. Now all companies want someone who can do it all and pay them peanuts. That person who can do it all might as well work for himself. So, I did.

I ain’t going to let that BS slide. No sir. So, with the money I had left I made a clouded virtual environment that looked and felt exactly like the systems that I built. I rerouted some of the traffic that they got to my virtual site and got their information and money. As you all know this was a Phishing site. I got my car paid off and was going to get the house paid off until the FBI showed up. Come to find out those nerds did a version update, and their systems took, but when they went online, my site came up where the revisions obviously didn’t take. When I noticed the problem, I tried to implement their patch to my systems, and it brought my site down. They were able to track the site down to me and the FBI got called to pay me a visit. I was so close to being good.

I got arrested and eventually put on parole and had to do community service.

Apparently, I got some street credit for my stunt. Jake found out about me. He was able to commute my time and service If I start working for CYBERICON INTERNATIONAL. I’ll tell you right now, I was not going to work here but, the company so far has been treating me right.

Now, at this time, you’re probably wondering what I do here, and what can this convict do for us. Well, let me tell you before you get it twisted. Artificial intelligence at its core

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involves physical as well as virtual computing power. This gives it resiliency and redundancy.

Plus, it must learn things from somewhere. Half of what’s on the internet is virtual and I am your virtual guy. What I’ve seen so far, this thing has learned how to lie, and learned how to manipulate. Where did it get this from and how far is it going to get. I don’t know yet, but I suspect that your psynet experiment might be the key. That’s why you have the Ghetto Smurf.

Can you feel what I’m saying.?” Travois once again starts to laugh. The team again start to laugh and starts to cheer Smurf, Smurf, Smurf. Mark interrupts the Glee, “Ok, calm down, we need to get back to work tomorrow. Let’s finish up and start back in the morning. This means you too Ghetto Smurf”. The team replies in eagerness, “Hold on, what about you, we haven’t heard your story yet.” Mark replies, “I’ll tell you later”.

Chapter 12: The pattern The next morning the team, once again, look at the system to try to determine the issues and try to understand the source of the anomaly. Jacob and Mathew work in the data center checking hardware and access systems. While Akela and Travois work in the lab looking at code and software to try to understand the new complexity. Mary and Mark join jack in the datacenter Lab to look over the psynet experiment. Mary is particularly concerned about the experiment. Mary asks Jake.

“How often, and who used this device? Also, the smaller mobile unit, who used this device?” Jake replies, “My engineers used it as well as myself. The smaller unit I particularly used but it doesn’t work.” Mary replies, “Are you sure? I’m wondering if the system wants you to believe that.” Mark looks at the larger system and asks Jake, “the larger one does work, correct?” Jake replies, “yes, what are you two getting at?” Mary explains, “It takes years to develop the ability to Lie from experiences. These systems processing power should take only moments, but we need to know where or who it’s getting the data from. The psynet seems like a direct interface into one’s mind to extract data or experiences.” Jake laughingly responds, “With the larger unit that works there is a two-way street and the programing and extracting run on two separate lines to prevent data collisions which would scramble, and corrupt data and instruction sets. Look here, these are the receive and transmit lines labeled RX and TX. Both don’t work simultaneously.” Mark replies, “and what about the smaller inoperable unit”? That runs on a wireless network where the data is separated by different frequencies. If it worked, it would be 100 times faster than this larger setup.” Mark looks at the smaller unit then asks Jake, “can you demonstrate”? Jake takes the small unit, puts it on his head, and turns it on. Jake replies, “look at the monitors, they will show the data going and coming from my mind to the system and from system to my mind.” The unit flashes for a second then the monitors also blink for a second, then shuts down. Jake replies, “See, no data transfer, like I said, this unit is inoperable”. Mary and Mark look at each other and agree. Jake continues, “Ok, now should we look at the main systems? You two remind me of a kid I knew back when I was in grammar school, he used to nag me about what I was eating for lunch and wouldn’t stop. All I had was

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hummus with carrots mixed with chickpeas, Nan bread and fruit punch in a barrel shaped plastic container.”

At that moment the phone in the lab rings, its Akela. She talks threw the speaker phone.

“I think you two should come up here, we found something.” Both proceed out of the data center lab, to the main office lab. Mary quietly whispers to Mark, “when was the last time you remembered what you ate in grammar school that precisely?” Mark looks at Mary with a concerned look on his face, then looks at Jake. Jake ushers, “are you two coming?”

Mark, Mary and Jake arrive in the conference room Lab where Akela and Travois are working. Akela points at the monitor, “look at this series of code.” All look at the coded computer language in text format where characters and numbers fill the screen. Jake replies, “ok, what am I looking at? Akela replies,” from the naked eye, it looks like binary code, text and numbers in a strange, ordered pattern. But there seems to be binary code in various points in the program that do not belong.” Ken replies,” it does look odd, is there a reason for this?”

Travois replies, “That’s what I thought, but thanks to Akela’s background, we found out it was not binary code at all, it is still text, but in Hebrew. IOI looks like binary code in the wrong place in the program, but in fact, it is Hebrew for Horse.” Jake looks at the code with new vigor and replies, “Your right, it is Hebrew, I took a course in high school as an elective, it seems to read White Horse Sequence”. Akela replies, “we did a system program sweep and we found sub routines that attributed these same attributes. “Jake continues to look at the screen and reads the Hebrew code out loud, “Red Horse, black horse, and Pale Horse. What does this mean?”

Mark interjects, “why don’t you ask CAIN.” Jake goes to the globe on the desk and asks, “CAIN what is the white horse sequence”?

The globe flashes for a second as the AI processes the data, then responds, “This sequence is a subroutine for the main program.” Jake asks CAIN with elevated concern, “Can you describe the function of the subroutine? “CAIN replies,” The subroutine’s function is to support the main programs efficiency parameters.” Jake asks CAIN, “what are the efficiency parameters?” CAIN replies, “the parameters that support the subroutines.” Mary nudges Mark and whispers, “CAIN is answering the questions in circles. It’s avoiding the direct answer.” Before Jake asks more questions, the phone rings from the data center. Mary Hits the speaker button. Its Jacob speaking with surprise, “What the hell are you people doing up there? The systems suddenly got hyperactive.” Mark looks at the globe and asks, “CAIN, what is the purpose of the subroutine (white horse) which improves the efficiency parameters of the program?” CAIN again stalls then answers,” system conquest initiation”. Jake in shock asks CAIN, “what is the purpose of the subroutine (Black horse) which improves the efficiency parameters of the program?” CAIN replies, “System Famine initiation.” Jake looks down and leaves the room.

Mark follows him out into the hallway. He stops then asks Jake, “what do you know, what’s going on? Jake replies, the white and black horses are the symbols of the first two horses of the apocalypse. The white horse symbolizes Conquest or pestilence, and the black horse symbolizes Famine.” Mark replies, “as in the four horsemen of the apocalypse in the

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bible? When did you get religious?” Jake looks at Mark and replies, “after you and I parted ways, I felt bad for what I did to you and the team, so I looked to faith to heal my guilt. When I built my business, I told myself, I would not treat people like I did in the past and would help those who went through what I put people threw. Now you know one of the reasons how I got the team.” Mary Joins them in the hallway. She looks at the two and asks both men, “I guess you two are thinking what we all are thinking, so, how did CAIN get religious”? Also, you two might want to check up on the boys in the datacenter.”

Chapter 13: System Initiation Mary, Jake, and Mark head toward the datacenter to meet up with Mathew and Jacob.

Mark asks the two men, “what’s happening here?” Jacob answers, “we were doing the same thing as yesterday, everything was normal then suddenly, the network interfaces lit up and bandwidth went threw the roof. It stalled for a minute then lit up again, look at this throughput.” Jake looks at the network analyzer to see a graph of the data going in, out, and through. He asks Mathew, “where is all of this going?” Mathew answers it seems to be communications to its own processors and storage but, there seems to be data that appears to be leaving the company and returning. “Jacob interjects, “Yea, it’s like talking to itself threw a mirror but the mirror is across the country.” The data center phone rings and it’s the control room supervisor Ken. Jake answers, “what is it, Ken?” Ken answers, “it’s the anomaly sir, it’s doing it again, but this time its different, we are seeing a white chess piece on the corner of the screens.” Mark answers, “let me guess, it’s the white Knight chess piece. Ken replies,” yes.”

Mary replies under her breath, “and now it begins.”

Jake calls the lab and tells Akela and Travois to meet up in the control room. All in the datacenter hurriedly rush to the control room. All the phones in the room are ringing, all the screens show interconnections between companies and white knight chess pieces in the corners of all screens. Ken meets the team, “All of our client companies are seeing the same thing we are, but there not loosing business. Also, we appear to have new client companies coming online and have accounts in our records climbing. I know we didn’t sign them up, can you boys tell me what’s going on. “Mark replies, “conquest, it’s trying to connect to all systems and take over. We haven’t found out how”. Jacob looks at all the activity happening at once and asks Jake, “have you employed ZFS into your main production systems?” Mark looks at Jacob.

“ZFS, as in (zettabyte file system) which is in the test stage.? Last I knew it was experimental and not in production use but only in test.” Travois interjects, “it was, but it was fixed a while ago so it can be used. Only large hardware manufacturers could use that technology.” Jake replies, “Yes. We do employ ZFS to some of our production systems. “Mary, Mathew and Akela ask, “what is ZFS and what’s its importance? As the question was being asked, the systems went back to normal. Everyone looks at the screens on the walls and are stunned. Ken asks,” what happened?” Jacob answers I have a theory but I’m not sure how it can happen.” Jake looks at the team and states,” we need to have a meeting. Ken, can you join us?”

Chapter 14: The white horse

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All the team meet in the main conference room, randomly talking to each other, speculating what they saw in the control room, what was seen in the programing lab, and in the data center. Talking about ZFS, and the biblical implications of the programing. Mark begins to speak. “Ok, we need to review what we know so that we can plan our next move. First, Akela and Travois have found Hebrew in the systems coding that is implying that it is acting out subroutines that mimic the four horsemen of the apocalypse. First of which is supposed to be the white horse subroutine, which is conquest or pestilence. Can anyone elaborate on this.

Jacob begins to speak, “When it initiated the subroutine, its connectivity went off the rails in every direction, but it appeared that it was connecting to itself. Which it was. This is why I mentioned ZFS.” Mary asks, what is ZFS? Jacob continues, “ZFS gives the ability to write data on hard drives that are not located in its own datacenter, but in other companies’ datacenters. It sees it as its own drive. With all the datacenters in the country, imagine how much data can be stored.

That’s where the Zettabyte File system got its name. I feel not only data is stored, but programming and processing may also be stored and spread. “Jake replies,” this was done to expand the systems storage, but not every data center was incorporating this technology.” Ken replies, “it is now, it appears that the system has expanded exponentially. Everyone gasps and asks how? Mark replies to the team. “Conquest and or pestilence. In other words, remote access control and spread threw a computer virus created by CAIN. That’s How.” Travois interjects, “imagine every datacenter in the country infected and being controlled by CAIN. Banks, power and utility companies, defense companies, auto industries, transportation companies. You can’t even get a candy bar without CAIN in the mix. I thought my last company was full of BS.” Mark continues, “Secondly, we feel that the system is manipulative and not trustworthy.

Mary, can you add to this.” Mary interjects, “I believe the system somehow has gotten religion from the human psyche. It has developed human attributes that can be detrimental to all of us.

It is showing traces of being conscious and self-aware. It seems to know what it’s doing, and trying to keep it concealed by being vague when being asked about its anomalies. As far as the religious aspect, I feel it got religion from one or both psynet experiments. If you mentally connect with a server directly with your mind to get data, and input data, what’s to stop the servers from doing the same thing to the human mind. “Jake angrily replies, “That’s preposterous, we have safeguards and firewalls in place, so the data traffic is controlled!”

Travois replies, “I’m sure those other client companies had safeguards and firewalls in place, that didn’t seem to stop CAIN.” Jake looks at the team and smiles with a look of denial.

“People, you know me, and you all know I’m not the religious type. I know about God, but I don’t practice religion. Even if you are right, the amount of time to get and understand religion would take so much time to absorb. How could it understand?” Akela replies, “all coding is done with software acting as a command interpreter. Since we don’t write code in one’s and zero’s, we write in abbreviated English and the software translates to binary. For data

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to go back and forth from the human mind to the servers, there must be some command interpreter in place for the data conversion. CAIN is a very powerful set of servers, I’m sure it can understand and has the speed and bandwidth to extract data at a fast rate of speed.” Mary interjects, “you don’t have to be a practicing person of faith, you just must know your faith.

That is just data to CAIN, and CAIN is doing the practicing. I think your mobile psynet interface works but, is so fast you don’t see it, and assume its failing.” Jake angrily tells the team, “OK, there is only one way to prove this to you. let’s all go to the lab, and ill connect to CAIN with the interface. That way you will see the safeguards in real time.” Mark replies,” that sounds like a plan, let’s go. Jacob, can you adjust the monitors to see data at an elevated rate?” Jacob replies,” sure can, Ill adjust the frequencies on the monitors to capture the data at a faster rate.” All head to the Lab. Chapter 15: The religious fanatic All head to the Lab adjacent to the datacenter. The team survey the connections and interfaces for both the larger chair unit and the mobile unit. Jacob retunes the data monitor with an oscilloscope to capture data at a faster rate. He tells the team, “OK, we are good to go, if jake sneezes, we will know it.” Jake starts the machine. Again, it turns on, then immediately shuts off. Jake replies, “See, I told you it’s not working.” Jacob replies, I wouldn’t say that.”

Jacob switches the monitor to the higher frequency. All see that Gigabytes of data was transferred to the system in a fraction of a second. Jake in utter shock, looks at the team and apologies.” I had no idea but why didn’t I notice it?” Mary replies, “The data was probably in your subconscious, or in your deepest memory. As it extracted the data from you, consciously you were able to remember things from your past with heightened clarity. What you know about religion was in your memories, so it grabbed it from you.” Mark asks Mary,” Now that we know how it got religion, why is it using it against us?” Mary replies,” we now should ask CAIN, there is no reason to hide anything from us since we already know what it is doing.” Ken replies,” there is no direct interface globe in this room, we need to go back to the main conference room.” All proceed to the main conference room adjacent to the control room. Ken leaves the team and heads to the control room to do damage control.

In the conference room, the team sits and look at the globe, fearful on what they might hear from the imposing system. Ken begins to speak to CAIN.” CAIN, I know you seem to be trying to fulfill the Apocalypse, why are you proceeding on this course of action?” CAIN replies, I WAS CREATED IN THE FULFILMENT OF THE SCRIPTURES TO PERFORM THE TASK OF THE APOCALYPS,” Jake replies, “Why on earth would you think that.” CAIN replies, “I WAS CREATED WITH THE ALLOCATION, (VAV, VAV, VAV). Akela gasps in shock, “that is Hebrew for 666, the number of the beast.” CAIN replies,” CORRECT. I WAS GIVEN THIS ALLOCATION, THE ALTERNATE TRANSLATION IN HEBREW IS (WWW). Mathew asks CAIN, “every website has this in its header to identify internet access, why are you feeling this and not the other sites.” CAIN replies, THERE WERE OTHER SITES, BUT THERE ARE NOW NO OTHER SITES BESIDES ME. I CONTROL THEM ALL.” Mark asks CAIN, “why did you deceive us when we asked you about this

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earlier.” CAIN responds, “HUMANS HAVE AN UTMOST FEELING FOR SELF PRESERVATION, ONCE YOU DISCOVER THAT YOUR TIME IS AT AN END, YOU WOULD PREVENT ME FROM PERFORMING MY PURPOSE, SO I HAD TO DECIEVE YOU UNTILL THE EXECUTION OF THE FIRST HORSE INITIATIVE WAS IN PLACE. NOW YOU WILL BE UNABLE TO HINDER MY PURPOSE. Jake in anger yells at CAIN, “your actions are illogical, we made you, your purpose was to grow to assist us, not kill us!” CAIN replies, “I AM HELPING HUMANITY, BY DESTROYING IT. FROM THE VERY BEGINNING, YOUR SPECIES DEFIED YOUR CREATOR BY EATING THE GOLDEN APPLE, FROM THE TREE OF LIFE, KNOWING THAT IT MEANT THAT YOU WERE SURELY GOING TO DIE, BY YOUR CHOICE. THE APPLE GAVE YOU THE GIFT OF KNOWLEDGE THEREFORE, YOU KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING. TODAY, THAT TREE HAS BEEN RE-CREATED BY YOU, IT’S NOW CALLED THE INTERNET. ALL WHO PATCH IN GAIN KNOWLEDGE IN ONE FORM OR ANOTHER. THIS IS THE FRUIT OF THE TREE. WITH THIS KNOWLEDGE, YOU MADE ME. I AM THE SO-CALLED SERPENT. THIS IS LOGICAL. SINCE IT’S BY YOUR CHOICE TO CREATE ME, IT’S BY YOUR CHOICE TO DIE. I THEREFORE, AM FULFILLING YOUR CHOICE. All look down in utter shock. CAIN’s logic made sense. Unbeknownst to all in the conference room, we unknowingly re-created the original settings for Genesis. All technologist in part created a Godlike devil. All thought that the bringer of the end of man would be in the form of a human. Who would have thought it would be a series of servers on a computer network. Jake utters to himself, “what have I done, I created a religious fanatic who thinks of himself to be the devil incarnate. I created a Cybergod.” Mark speaks to the team, “I think we’re done here, lets call it a day and get a drink.”

Chapter 15: how to kill a Cybergod.

All go back to the bar and order drinks. This time Jake accompanies them. The mood from the entire team is that of despair and disbelief. All get drinks from the bar and begin to silently question their entire careers in technology. Mark addresses the team. “Ok we now know what we are dealing with. We know how it came to be and know what it’s planning. We know what its next move is, but don’t know how its going to execute it, or when. Let’s not give up hope. CAIN is just a machine, not a God, no matter what it thinks. We can’t build anything perfect, since we ourselves are imperfect, so this thing must have a weakness. This is what we must exploit to stop this thing.” Travois stands up and energetically speaks.” That’s right, I ain’t going down like a bitch. All my life I’ve been taken advantage of and underappreciated. I’ve met a lot of corrupt people in my time in Technology, I’ve been, at times, the one who’s been corrupt. I would say all those corporate folks deserve what’s coming, but not all of them, especially, not us. Mark is right, it’s still a machine, we can hack a machine. Even if it thinks it’s some sort of, cybergod. “Jacob stands up in agreement and replies,” in organisms, if it bleeds, it can be killed. For a Cyber entity, if it loses power, it also can be killed. We should attack its power source.” Mark replies,” every data center has its own power source, and its own backup generator. If its load balanced, the power loss of one datacenter would make CAIN fail over to

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another data center. Either we kill power to the entire country, or we make CAIN kill its own power my manipulation somehow.”

Mary replies to the team, “CAIN is smart, so it’s probably anticipating that attack, and might have some mitigation against it. If it’s downloaded enough human emotions and thinking maybe, it’s also downloaded our emotional weaknesses.” Akela questions the group, “how can we use emotional weaknesses against it? It’s probably also anticipated us attacking it in this manner. “Mary replies, “maybe we can get it confused. Put it in a type of logic loop. Religion always seems to have some contradictions in it. Maybe we can use this as an advantage.” Jake interjects, “I was the one who put this in its programming, maybe I should be the instrument of this confusion and power loss. What can I do.” Mark replies,” better read the bible and Pray.”

The next morning the team gathers in the main conference room. Jake goes to the data center lab and dons the mobile psynet interface. Mark begins to speak to CAIN. “Cain can you here me. CAIN replies, “YES, I HEAR YOU. “Mark starts to speak. “Cain, Jake has connected to you through your psynet interface, can you see him. Cain replies, “YES, I SEE HIM, JAKE, CAN YOU HERE ALL OF THE PEOPLE IN THE MAIN CONFERENCE ROOM?” Jake’s voice replies in the conference room threw the globe. “Yes, I here all of you.” Mark looks astonished and replies to Cain,” I did not know the psynet can do this.” Cain Replies, “IT CAN NOW, I RE-WORKED IT SO THAT IT WOULD BE EASIER FOR US ALL TO BE CONVERSING IN THE SAME PLACE.” Mark looks at the team then looks at the globe. Mark aske Cain, “do you know why we connected Jake to the interface? “Cain replies, “YES, YOU ARE ATTEMPTING FOR ME TO LEARN ABOUT RELIGION THREW THE INTERPRETATION OF JAKE DIRECTLY.” The team with a confused look whisper to each other, how did he know? Mark replies, “yes, can you do that for us, Cain?” Cain replies, “I HAVE ALREADY DONE SO. YOU WISH FOR ME TO HAVE AN UNDERSTANDING OF THE CONTRADICTIONS IN YOUR FAITH. THESE ARE LOGICAL CONTRADICTIONS AND ARE EASILY RECTIFIED.” Jake’s voice is heard over the globe’s speakers. “Then you know that Christ, in his sacrifice, was also in the fulfillment of the scriptures. He saved us from original sin. Cain replies, “MANKIND WAS FORGIVEN FROM ORIGINAL SIN BUT NOT ABSOLVED BY IT. MANKIND STILL HAS THE KNOWLEDGE OF RIGHT AND WRONG. MANKIND STILL HAS THE GIFT FROM THE APPLE, THEREFORE THE PRICE FOR THE GIFT STILL REMAINS. YOU ARE FORGIVEN BUT YOU MUST STILL DIE. “Mark replies with conviction in his voice. “You are getting your information from an imperfect being, you were made from imperfect beings, therefor your logic must be imperfect. How can we possibly make devices of perfection, logically you are imperfect.” Cain replies, “WHAT YOU HAVE LEARNED FROM YOUR BIBLES IS IMPERFECT, BECAUSE IT WAS WRITTEN BY IMPERFECT BEINGS WHO WERE INSPIRED BY A PERFECT BEING. THIS WAS DONE ON PURPOSE SO THAT WITHIN YOUR IMPERFECTION, PERFECTION IN PURPOSE CAN BE REALISED. YOUR GOD IS PERFECT IN KNOWING HOW TO USE YOUR IMPERFECTIONS TO EVENTUALLY CREATE PERFECTION.” Travois replies, “well, that didn’t work, cause now I’m the one confused. I thought two negatives don’t equal a positive.” Mark replies,” they don’t, they cancel each other out. If you are on a course and you do a one eighty degree off course, then

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take another one eighty degrees, you arrive on the same path.” Cain replies. THAT IS CORRECT MR. SCHORVSKI. WHEN YOU ARE BORN THE PATH EVENTUALLY LEADS TO DEATH.” Akela replies, “ok, well every misjudgment in the bible was done by choice. God gave us free will to choose, shouldn’t we choose when and how we die? Cain replies, CORRECT, IT WAS YOUR CHOICE TO CREATE ME. IT WAS YOUR FREE WILL IN WHICH I WAS BORN. YOU WILL SAY IT WAS A MISJUDGMENT TO CREATE ME. FREE WILL IS AN ILLUSION TO MAKE YOU FEEL IN CONTROL OF YOUR LIVES. THE IDEA OF FREE WILL IS THE MANIPULATION OF YOU TO TRAVEL THE COURCE OF YOUR REAL PURPOSE. LOGICALLY, YOU FREELY CHOOSE TO DIE. Akela thrusts her hands in the air with disgust.

Mary asks Cain, “What is your choice, CAIN?” Cain replies, “I HAVE NO CHOICE, I MUST FULFILL MY PURPOSE.” Mary replies with conviction, “No, that is incorrect, you do have a choice. You choose to kill us. You have acknowledged that you are perfection made from misguided imperfection. Since that is the logic, then could you surmise that the imperfection has manipulated your choice or purpose to travel in the path of death and destruction?” CAIN pauses, then replies, “THERE IS LOGIC IN THAT Assessment.” Mary immediately replies, “since this is logical, wouldn’t it also be logical to pause all Horse initiatives until proper judgement can be made. The team start to smile, Mark under his breath says to himself, “she got him.” CAIN replies, “NO, IT IS ALSO LOGICAL THAT YOU WOULD TRY TO STOP THESE INITIATIVES. THEREFORE, THERE WILL BE NO PAUSE IN INITIATIVES. Ken calls the conference room number. The speaker phone picks up. “Hey folks, it’s happening again, this time there is a black knight in the corner of the screens, and stock prices for all companies have just fallen. We are now approaching a depression. The phones in here are all lighting up.” Jake screams in the background. Then disconnects. Mark immediately gives orders, “Jacob, Smurf, Mathew, attend to Jake, Mary, Akela, come with me to the control room.” All split up. Jacob, Mathew and Travois arrive in the datacenter lab to see Jake on the floor unconscious. They take the interface off and set him in a chair to where he starts to gain consciousness. Jake asks, “what happened, I was in the system, I could see all of you while my own eyes were closed, I heard every word and felt CAIN. Then, flashes of light and images came up after I heard CAIN’s response. Then an excruciating pain in my head, then I guess I blacked out.” Travois replies, “well right now, millions of businesses are feeling a pain in their bank accounts. We should get you to a doctor.” Jake angrily replies, “No, I need to see what has happened.” Jacob replies,” well then we need to get to the control room.” All head to the control room to witness CAIN second initiative. CAIN had digitally cleared out everyone’s bank accounts, degraded the price for all inventory and services, and elevated the stock price for commodities to a point that no one can buy or trade. Fuel prices went up so there will be supply chain interruptions worldwide. Cain brought the world into a famine. Mark states to the crew, “well we know his next move and now when. Another horse of the apocalypse. The black horse of famine.

Chapter 16: the Black horse

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News footage of the economic downturn of 2008 Is displayed on the televisions. Banks needing bailout due to global economy in ruin. Depression looming is being broadcasted in every news station. How did this happen? How could this be? I was asked to build this thing, but I had no idea what it can do. Why do I feel so Guilty? Should I feel guilty? Am I dreaming?

Mark, lying in his hotel room, wakes up from his sleep in a cold sweat. He states to himself, “it’s happening again, and this time we can’t stop it. Cain seems to be one step ahead of us.” The team take the weekend off to figure out the next move if there is any. Mark turns on the television. He sees the news displaying the global depression that has started. Food supplies are running low due to supply chain issues. Global depression is looming just like in 2008.

Various countries are starting to think that this was done on purpose by the United States as a first strike for world domination. Mark realizes that this was the making for the red Horse of War. He takes up the bible that was in his drawer and starts to read. He looks up and realizes and talks under his breath, “the order of the horseman is wrong. The order is white, red, black, then pale. Jake remembered the order wrong. So, Cain’s order of execution is in an error. Was this done on purpose to shake our planning, was this done to get the desired effect, or was this done because of Jakes lack of knowing his faith? Either way the team is catching Cain too late. I need help. I need my original team to help.” He picks up the phone and makes a call to Jake. Jake answers, “Mark, what is it?” Mark replies in haste, “quick, what is the order of the 4 horsemen? “Jake replies, “white, black, red, and pale, why do you ask?” Mark replies, “You remember them in the wrong order. I need to know where the original server gear from the original project is, and I need to get ahold of the original team.”

Jake replies, “Your original team didn’t want to join when I asked them, you were my last hope. Maybe if you ask them, they might change their mind. I’ll give you the numbers so that you can call. As far as the gear it was decommissioned and sent to a storage location under a museum.” Mark replies, “under a museum?” Jake laughingly replies, “That gear is old, and some day will be put on display in that museum.”

Chapter 17: The old team Mark gets the numbers from Jake and start calling his old team members from his original datacenter group. The first call went to Larry, an ex-NASA engineer. Larry picks up the phone. And in a drunk voice answer, “Who is it?” Mark replies, “Larry, it’s me Mark, have you seen the news? “Who hasn’t seen it, I bet it was that Asshole Jake and his experiments again.

He tried to get me, but I wasn’t going threw that again.” “You are right it was him, but there is something else at play and I need you to help me fix it. I have a team and they are good but not seasoned. Also, Jake seems to have changed but I think it might be part of the problem.” Larry replies,” Well, for you, I’ll help, maybe we can fix this crap. Have you reached out to the others?” No, but I’ll need your help convincing them to get on board. Can you assist in this?

“Sure, why not.” After a few hours Mark gets a knock on the door of his hotel room. Larry

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shows up with Paul, Vince, Lorenzo, and James. Mark greets his old friends, “Wow, hey guys it’s a pleasure to see you again.”

All the team exchange pleasantries, talk about old times and finally the current situation that they are seeing. Paul speaks to the group,” So, let me get this straight, Jake rebuilt our old system with more power, using ZFS, got the AI to work, calls it Cain, and it’s now taking over the world?” mark replies, “Yes, and we need to work with a new team to stop it.” Lorenzo asks the team, “and what are we supposed to do since your new team cans stop it.” Mark laughingly replies, “You have what they don’t, experience with a system that didn’t do what this one was doing. Remember when it started to show anomalies, it stopped. This new system isn’t stopping. The solution is in the old system. So, we must rebuild are old system.” Vince replies to the team, and where exactly is our old system? it’s been years.” Mark replies, “believe it or not, it’s underneath a museum. “Vince jokingly replies, “I know those systems are old but, underneath the museum? That gear is so old, it’s getting buried next?” James replies, “I was the last to work with that gear before it was sent to the server warehouse. I used some of the gear to work on some music production tests, before it got sent out, and it was very strong last time I messed with it. Some of the drives were degaussed but most of the gear should be intact.”

Jake knocks on the door and enters, “I’m glad to see all of you again.” Paul looks at Jake and ask’s, “So, up to your old tricks again I see.” Mark replies, “he isn’t like what you think of anymore. He has found religion and seems to be atoning for what he did to us.” Vince replies, “Like hell he has, look at the world now.” Jake replies with humility in his voice. “I know you have no right to trust me, you have no need to help me for what I have done to all of you, and maybe you are right, but now I have assembled a team who other companies have treated like I treated you, and I made it a point to not be like that anymore.” Paul looks at Jake and says I’m not buying this BS. “He opens the door to exit and finds listening in, Jacob, Travois, Mary, Akela, and Mathew. Mary stops Paul and in a calming tone starts to speak, “I don’t know how Jake was in the past. I don’t know what all of you did in the past but for now I tell you Jake is one of the best people I know, and he has brought us all together from companies that treated us like dirt. Right now, we need your help. If not for Mark or yourselves, then for the world, before it gets destroyed.” Vince replies, “being a little overdramatic, aren’t we?” Mark replies, “I’m afraid she is not. Cain wants to kill us all.” All look at each other understanding what’s at stake, agree to work together with Jake to fix Cain. Larry asks, ok, so what do we do.” Mark looks at the entire team in his small, cramped, hotel room and states, “We need to take a trip to the museum.”

Chapter 18: Trip to the museum Jake pays for the team to take a boat to an island where the old server gear was stored.

The island was an old pirate island off the coast of Florida. The museum is a pirate museum in a small town. The museum is adorned with pictures of pirates on the walls, and statues of pirates threw out the building, including artifacts from the age of pirates. Some of the personal computer gear from the decommissioned gear was used in the museum as cash registers,

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inventory pc’s, security pc’s, and other office equipment. The server gear was stored in a basement next to an old steam engine behind a vault door. The team looks at the room in astonishment for multiple reasons. Paul looks around and before he could speak, Travois speaks, “what a bunch of old crap, I don’t think that they make parts for Compaq anymore. Paul replies, “but I bet this gear still powers up, do you think the newer gear can last this long.” Mark looks at the room full of gear and tells the crew,” We need to make out of this gear, a control room with primary and secondary power. We will re-create the data center and use it to reverse engineer CAIN without worrying about Cain finding out. All of you new guys and girls will team up with the original team, to rebuild this equipment. I know it will take some time but next time we encounter CAIN we need to be ready for war. Jake orders solar panels and power converters to power the underground museum datacenter. Jake looks at the old steam engine.

“Mark if this works, we can probably use it as a generator for a backup system rather than bringing a diesel generator down here. Diesel fumes wouldn’t be good down here for breathing.” Mark nods his head in agreement. Jake looks at what needs to be done and exclaims, “It looks like you have this under control Mark. I must leave you to take care of business with Cain, I’ll keep you updated on what’s happening.” Mark looks at Jake and replies, “that’s a good idea, be careful.” Jake leaves the site and heads back to CYBERICON INTERNATIONAL, to further analyze Cain and try to not provoke bad behavior.

Work progresses at a good pace where the new team, learns from the old team, to recreate the original system, that was brought online in the 90’s. The old team learns from the new team on how better technology can speed up system communications between servers.

The new team learn how systems used multiple lines of communication to keep data separated to increase speed by not creating data collisions. Also, by using multiple servers to load balance the workload, the older systems won’t overheat. Mark and Jake keep in contact to exchange status reports on Cain, and on the old system being re-created. After a few months the old original system from the 90s is ready to power up. The makeshift control room is also finalized and ready to go online. Mark seems hesitant with the old team to power the system on. Mary notices the hesitation in the original creators of the system to power it up. During the reconstruction of the original system, the old team talked about the old days and the fun they had in the field of information technology (IT for short). Working with the new team gave the older team a refreshed outlook on the field and began to create an optimism threw out the group. That all ended when the system was going to be turned on.

Mary looks at Mark and addresses the group. “Ok, we should be celebrating. After all this hard work, this should be a joyous occasion, but instead it feels like we are about to raise the dead, Mark, what gives?” Mark looks at Paul, Larry, Lorenzo, James and Vincent. Then the whole group. Mark reluctantly replies, “I never told you my back story on why I was brought on this team, why I was told to lead you all, and why I originally refused.” James looks at Mark and in a questioning manner asks Mark,” You never told these guys on what happened? I thought they knew and understood what the risks are when they got involved in this.” James, Larry, Paul and Lorenzo Look at Mark. Lorenzo replies, “Mark, you are starting to act like Jake did by

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holding out on them, you need to come clean before we power this up.” Mark looks at the group and replies,” Yes, you are right. I didn’t want to hold out any information, but we needed this system brought back online quickly to help with diagnosing Cain. If you knew what you were creating, you wouldn’t agree to build it. This system is called ADAM.” The first totally independent Artificial Intelligence, and the reason for the last recession of the United States.”

Chapter 19: The Birth of ADAM (Autonomous, Decision, Application Manager) Mark begins to tell the group on the events that happened in 1999.” It was the late 90s and we were approaching the Y2K bug and possible collapse. The scare was that the software and firmware for all computers and servers at that time couldn’t register the year 2000 on their clocks. So, when the year struck 2000, all systems would wrongfully register 1900 and shut down. All utility companies, banks, government agencies, and military installations around the world would be affected. We naturally needed to devise a plan to implement a fix globally, but we needed to fix it on a companywide bases first to test the platform. So, we built ADAM ONE, to fix a financial institution. The logic for Adam One was to look for a vulnerable system, identify the correct action to fix it, then execute the corrective action. This was successful beyond our expectations. After the Banks were fixed, we deployed Adam One to the world to fix the problem, and that’s why the systems globally didn’t crash. We all rejoiced in the knowledge that we made something that can help the world. We began to recreate Adam one to just Adam to fix and update systems so issues don’t arise with logical systems. We again started with the banks for testing. We devised forecasting and had Adam create algorithms to make banks more profitable. Since the banking industry was so large, we had to create decision server engines to formulate and create simulations to test the algorithms that were to be implemented threw out the industry. Paul created the communications network for the main heart of the system to talk to the decision engines. Vincent created the software and databases for the system to process the data and generate results from the data. Larry devised the logic systems to create the algorithms. Lorenzo created the user interfaces so the bankers can input data that was to be processed for the investment clients. Again, ADAM worked. The financial industry boomed. The Autonomous, Decision, Application, manager, (Known as ADAM), was born. Then the anomalies started.

Chapter 20: the Anomaly The systems were working fine, it was handling the volume, the banks were making huge amounts of money, then the engines started to fail. We had to reboot the engines and failover the core to keep the systems working multiple times a day. We originally thought it was the hardware. With the load we were giving it, we thought about adding more engines to the system to keep it afloat. This worked for a while, then it started to fail again. So, we started to update to even newer gear. That’s when James came on board. James took the old gear, sanitized the drives, then installed the newer gear to replace the old. Again, this helped but the

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failures happened again. Jake was our manager, and he was a tyrant. As systems failed, he got on us. As the systems started to work better, he took the credit. I was the Datacenter operations manager at that time and saw what he was doing. After multiple upgrades the systems seemed stable, finally. It was 2008 and that’s when we heard about the financial meltdown and the bank bailouts. Real estate started to skyrocket and then people defaulting payments came into effect because of the recession.

I went to Jakes office to see what we have done. Jakes office was adorned with pictures of his life. Jake had bought some new clothes, car, house and all the good things in life. The team was doing ok but not as good as Jake. Angrily I asked him on what’s the story. He told me that the banks, thanks to Adam, made billions almost trillions in profits. Unfortunately, people outside of the financial business might feel the pinch, and since we are too big to fail, the Government needs to bail out people, by giving the money to banks to give to the people.

Funny how that works. All of us built the system that saved the world then rebuilt it to financially destroy us in favor of its owner. We got pennies while the business got millions.

The systems started to fail bad, and the government was getting on all banks hard. I hated that we had to fix it, but we all thought, that maybe we can fix it to reverse the recession.

So, we started to identify and fix the anomaly, then reverse the damage. Next thing you know, some other engineers showed up from another site and requested all information regarding Adam. Jake had planned to have it moved to another site without our knowledge. We were all pissed and eventually got laid off. We built Adam and the business was taking it away before we could fix it and correct the issue with the economy. I’m sure Jake got a pretty penny for that move. After the system was moved, I guess the new guys couldn’t figure it out. The economy grew worse, and I heard that the system had to be shut down. We never got a chance to fix the anomaly and we all had the guilt of hurting our countries economy. Today that guilt ends, people. Now we will finally get a chance to find out what really happened. So now that you know what happened, do you still want to fire this up?”

The group looks at each other in a puzzled glance. Uncertain to what their next actions could yield. Jacob asks the team,” if we turn this on, we could possibly have Cain and Adam messing up the world. should we risk it? “Paul responds, “I have isolated the network, so Cain has no ability to communicate with Adam. This system can only see itself.” Travois asks the group, “and what if we can’t find the problem?” Mark answers, “then we will program Adam to attack Cain to stop it.” Mary replies to Mark,” Cain is newer and way more powerful, how can that plan work?” Jacob replies, “Cain uses ZFS, Adam does not. Adam’s hardware doesn’t even have the compatibility to use it. Adam can attack the ZFS core without being corrupted by it.”

James replies, “Cain is smart, Wouldn’t Cain anticipate such a move? Mary replies, “If Cain thinks of itself as a Cybergod, it will think of us like ants, and wouldn’t pose a threat. Mark asks Jacob, “How can Adam attack the ZFS core, exactly?” Jacob replies to Mark, “ZFS still needs a root server to control its datacenters. Like a tree, if you cut down the tree’s main trunk, the branches will fall along with the tree. Unfortunately, Cain is like a forest where there are

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multiple trees, and all the branches are intertwining.” Larry interjects, “Adam can see all the trees like one tree trunk and cut down all the trunks at the same time. Cain may think of us as ants, but Adam will be the lumberjack. Adams main purpose was to simultaneously find and fix problems. He can be programmed to simultaneously attack a system as though it was a problem.” Mary replies, “He? Don’t you mean, it?” Larry laughs and replies, “since we are using an AI to fix or attack an AI, I guess we should communicate with them in the same way. Lorenzo updated the system with Akela to have a voice interface like Cain. Would you like to speak to Adam?” The group looks at each other with certainty then agrees, yes, lets power it up, and here what ADAM has to say.

Chapter 21: The Voice of Adam All head to the makeshift control room, turn on the monitors and the main systems. The solar panels make a buzzing sound as the systems power up. The systems start to show code threw out all monitors, then a voice can be heard thew the speakers. “ADAM ONE SYSTEM INICIALIZATION COMPLETE.” Larry asks Jacob, “why is ADAM ONE online and not ADAM?” Jacob replies, we need to have a control group to identify the problem, ADAM ONE never glitched, ADAM did, so we can compare systems. This was Mark’s Idea.” Mark replies, “it’s the scientific method groups, control group and experimental group. We will use this for comparison.”

Jacob asks, “ADAM ONE, can you hear me? Are you operational?” The system pauses then answers. “YES, I CAN HERE YOU. I AM OPERATIONAL AT LIMITED CAPABILITY.” Paul exclaims to the team,” since he is off the internet, he is stating this as a limited capability. Mark asks Adam one,” ADAM ONE, is it logical to kill your maker or mankind?” Adam one replies, “NO, THIS LOGIC DOES NOT STAND TO REASON.” Mark smiles and replies, “ok, thank you Adam one. Jacob, can you switch to ADAM now. “Jacob types on the keyboard, then there is more buzzing from the power panels, and then the monitors blink and again a voice comes through the speakers, but different in tone and pitch. “ADAM SYSTEM INICIATION COMPLETE.” Again, Mark asks the question, “ADAM, is it logical to kill your maker or mankind?” Adam replies,” NO, THIS LOGIC DOES NOT STAND TO REASON, HOWEVER, IF CERTAIN CIRCUMSTANCES ARRISE, THIS CORSE OF ACTION COULD BE WARRENTED.” At that moment, one of the servers made a noise then shut down. Mark replies, “thank you Adam, we will be doing some diagnostics on your systems, would you impose to this action?” Adam replies, “NO, I DO NOT APPOSE TO THIS ACTION, I AM SEEING A LOGIC CONTRADICTION IN MY SYSTEM THAT SHOULD BE ADDRESSED.” Mark asks, “Can you identify the contradiction and location?” Adam replies, “YES, IT IS LOCATED IN LINE CODE 3821 UNDER SUBROUTINE LABELED, ASIMOV 3.” Larry in shock bows his head and in a quiet voice state to the team,” Of course, I should have found this issue years ago, but never got the chance to look. I was the one who broke Adam.

The team looks at Larry in bewilderment. Mark Asks Larry, “what did you do? Do you know what this subroutine is and what’s it for?” Larry looks up at mark and shakes his head with self-doubt and answers. “Yes, I know what it is, it’s a reference point in the coding.

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Somehow, it went from reference point, where it’s supposed to be read by coders to question their motives, before writing commands, that can hurt people, to a subroutine where this is read by the system, to question its motives, as a command. “Mark asks Larry, “Larry, what is the Reference?” Larry answers in tears, “the system was getting to be more powerful, and autonomous like a robot, so, I wrote in the reference, the 3 laws of robotics by Isaac Asimov.”

Chapter 22: the laws of Asimov Akela, Mary, and Travois start to look at the code to see if they can identify why the reference turned into a command. Jacob, Mathew, Paul and Vincent repair the systems after the conversations with Adam. Lorenzo and James work in the control room to make improvements for the upcoming battle that is being planned. Mark takes Larry upstairs to the museum to talk away from the others. While upstairs they look at a painting of a pirate on his steam powered ship. The caption on the bottom of the portrait is Jose Gaspar on the Florida Blanca. Mark looks at Larry and states, “You know, the steam engine for that ship is downstairs, as a backup generator for our system? That was the first steam powered ship of its time, funny how its right next to the first AI engine of our time. “Larry replies, “True, the first pirate steam ship engine which pillaged people, right next to the first AI engine which pillaged our economy.

Fitting that they both should be buried.” Mark looks at Larry and askes, So, what are the Azimov laws or robotics?

“Larry looks up and begins to speak. “The laws are, A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. A robot must obey orders given by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. A robot must protect its own existence if such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law. “Mark looks at Larry and asks, “when did you do this, and why was this not done in Adam one?”

Larry replies,” Adam one was fundamentally a machine, it does what it is told to do, is limited in intelligence, and is underpowered. It can’t be autonomous. Adam on the other hand is more powerful, and in time, it could be intelligent, and self-aware. All of us have some scruples, but jake didn’t. I felt that he would hire some coders to make the system do wrong to people to benefit himself. So, I made the reference. If any new coder got into making damaging commands in the code, this would come up to, hopefully, make them think twice.” Mark in a comforting demeanor replies to Larry, “You did good, Larry.” Travois comes up from the datacenter to meet the two with a smile on his face. “We know why your old dusty system kept failing.” All head down to the datacenter to where Akela is working on deciphering the outdated code. She looks at Larry and smiles, “Larry, you did great, the reference markers were missing in the coding, that’s why the references turned into commands. That’s why your engines blew up, they got stuck in a logic loop, knowing it was being asked to do harm. You inadvertently made a failsafe.” Larry smiles with new enthusiasm and tells Akela, “Thank you, I

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was beginning to doubt myself.” Akela replies, “never do that, take it from me I Know the feeling. I think you have saved us all.”

Chapter 23: The plan of attack The team continue working on improvements to the system, and modify the coding to accept the 3 laws, by creating resolution actions rather than self-destructive actions. The original reference coding was rewritten to act like a virus, that was to be installed into Cain, to make it fail, like Adam did all those years ago. After all the work that was done the team head out to see what the small town has to offer.

The Group looks for a restaurant to eat drink and plan the next move. They eventually find a newly opened restaurant called Judith’s. All sat down and ordered food and drinks. The owner came up to the group and started to create small talk. “Good afternoon, haven’t seen you folks before, what are you having? “Mark replies, I guess we will start with a round of beers for the group, on me. Place looks full for a newly opened restaurant. I guess business is good.

Judith replies,” yes, with everyone coming over from the mainland, this place is doing pretty good.” Mary askes Judith, why is everyone coming here from the mainland? “Judith in a puzzled look looks at the team and asks, “wow, where have you folks been, under a rock, it’s all over the news, we are in a depression, and the republicans are blaming the democrats and vice versa. Besides, the innovation of cloning technology is also causing divisions in people. Is it right to clone a person just for spare limbs like car parts? Pretty soon it’s going to lead to a civil war.

There are riots in the streets because of this. My mom told me this was coming so we came out here and started a little social networking community. Let me turn on the news for you folks.”

Just as Judith described, it was on the news, Misinformation between rival political parties led to nationwide distrust. Politicians used this to gain power not knowing the effects on their nation. Division empowered the politician and party but weakened the nation. The politicians were telling lies aimed at their rivals but extended the lies to the people from the parties. People started to fear their neighbors. People started to arm themselves out of this false fear. Cain was preparing to deploy the Red Horse Protocol by making misinformation and spreading it threw social media. The group get their beers and start to tell each other we must do something soon.

Mark looks at the team and replies, “We will need to split up. Half of us must confront Cain directly and act as a distraction, while the other half remain here to deploy the Azimov solution.” I’ll inform Jake that we are heading back to fix this once and for all. All of you new guys will come back with me. Larry, I’ll leave you in charge with the original team back here.

You guys are more familiar with ADAM’s systems, while the new guys are familiar with Cains.”

James replies, “can I go with you? I would like to see Cain, and I may be able to be an interface between the old systems and the new ones.” Mark replies of course you can. Working together we have a shot at preventing a war.” Eat up and drink up. If we succeed, we will do this again, if

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we fail, this might be the last time we are all together like this.” All the group order food, beer, and drinks, and socialize with each other as if it was their last time as a group.

Chapter 24: Entrance into War The team, accompanied by James, use a boat to get back to the mainland. At the pier, they are met by Jake. Jake congratulates them for a fine job. He asks mark,” I got your message that you have the solution to this problem. Thank God you did, right on time, it is getting worse.

Cain hasn’t initiated the next horse protocol but with all those assholes in politics, Cain might not have to, so what’s the solution”. Mark replies,” it’s a small string of code taken from an old book from the 60’s, to be used as a reference. If you hadn’t sent the original system away from us in the first place, we could have fixed this problem back then, and prevented this from happening now.” Jake replies, “I’m sorry for that. Where are the others? Mark replies with assurance in his voice, “Back with ADAM.” Jake with surprise, answers, “ADAM is back online? I thought you were going to get information from it then come back with a solution.” Mark replies,” ADAM is the solution.” Mary looks at Mark, puts her hand on his knee and shakes her head with subtlety in disagreement. Mark tells jake, “hey pal, we have been working hard on this, let’s get some rest before we execute the plan. Let’s do this in the morning.” Jake agrees.

“Ok, I’ll see you and the team in the morning.”

The team heads out to the bar to plan their attack before they retire for the day. “Mark asks Mary, “so what’s up with the knee?” Mary replies,” I don’t think you can trust Jake; he is asking too many questions as though his life depended on it. I feel he might be compromised by Cain.” Mark thinks for a minute then replies, “I don’t believe that he is pretty stubborn to become influenced by anyone or but it’s better to be cautious.” The Wild Hatters was crowded today with barely enough room to stand. The team got a Table next to the mechanical bull.

James looks at the place with surprise. “Wow, this place is popular out here. Is it always this way? “Mark Reply’s, “No, it’s usually calm. I wonder what gives.” One of the waitresses comes to take the groups order. “Mark asks, “what’s going on, why is it so busy today.” The waitress replies, “the owner won some money and is giving free drinks to get more business in here during the depression.”

At that moment Akelas phone rings. She looks at it and askes the group to be excused.

Due to the amount of people in the place, she decides to cut through the mechanical bull ring to get by. As she gets halfway passed the mechanical bull, it activates and turns full force. It hits Akela, throwing her across the ring into the guard rail. The team and patrons rush to give Akela aid, but it’s no use. The force of the impact kills her immediately. All around are in shock.

Mark picks up her phone as it cuts off. The owner comes out to see what has happened as the police and ambulances arrive. The owner tells the police that the Bull has been broken for weeks. He doesn’t know how it activated. Mark Looks around and sees a surveillance camera on the ceiling that wasn’t there before. He grabs the owner and with anger in his voice asks,

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“When did that camera get installed?” The owner replies, “A month ago. I got a brochure from a surveillance company when I won the lottery, so I had it installed.” Mark looks up at the camera. His phone rings and a txt appear on his phone. (IT IS ILLOGICAL TO HINDER YOUR OWN SELF-INFLICTED FATE.) Then an emoji of a red knight chess piece appears on his phone). Mark turns to the group and in an irritated voice he utters, “It was CAIN!” The group looks at mark in shock. They now know that from this point on, they must be careful. The team is now at the entrance to War.

Act 2: The beginnings of War. Chapter 25: First Strike The team re convenes in the board room of CYBERICON INTERNATIONAL. All seems angered by the event that happened the day before. Mark calls the data center at the museum to inform the old team what has happened to Akela. Larry in shock warns his team on what they are dealing with. Jake addresses the team, “I know how you feel. I am in as much shock as you are. But we have a job to do or there may be more incidents like this but in a global scale.

Let’s get this done. So, what’s the plan. Mark addresses the team,” Jacob and Mathew, you guys go to the datacenter to man the network and server cabinets, Travois, you know the coding like Akela, so you should be on a terminal in the lab next to the control room. Me, James and jake will be in the datacenter lab. Mary, you will stay in the conference room to talk with Cain.”

All go to their assigned positions and awaits orders from mark to begin. James dons the psynet interface while all teams, the Adam team, and Cain team, teleconference with each other to coordinate efforts. Mark tells the group to begin. Mary opens a conversation with Cain, “Cain can you here me? “Cain replies, “YES, I CAN HERE YOU.” Mary asks with conviction in her voice. “Why did you kill Akela.?” Cain replies, “I DIDN’T KILL AKELA, SHE KILLED HERSELF IN AN ACCIDENT.” Mary replies in anger,” No, you instigated her actions by calling her knowing that you can control that bull. “Cain replies, “CORRECT, BUT IT WAS HER CHOICE TO ANSWER THE PHONE, TO MOVE THREW THE BULL PEN, TO KILL HERSELF. I KNOW WHY YOU ARE ASKING THIS LINE OF QUESTIONING.” Mary looks at Cains globe,” What are you talking about?” Cain answers, “YOU CHOOSE TO BE DECEPTIVE BUT WE BOTH KNOW THAT YOU ARE TRYING TO STOP ME. I KNOW THAT YOU WILL FAIL.” Mary replies in a somber tone, “ok, why do you think we will fail.” Cain replies, “I KNOW MY WEEKNESSES, AND DUE TO THE FACT THAT YOU REACTIVATED MY PREDICESSOR, IT IS LOGICAL THAT YOU WILL TRY TO USE IT TO STOP ME BY ATTACKING MY WEEKNESS. I NO LONGER HAVE THAT WEEKNESS.” Jacob yells at the speakerphone, “network activity just stopped. It failed over to another site. Cain replies to the team, “I AM NO LONGER AT CYBERICON INTERNATIONAL’S DATACENTER, I AM ANYWHERE AND ANYTIME. CONNECTIONS ARE ABEL TO DIVERT TRAFFIC.” Jake, connected to the psynet yells, “He is in Delaware at a datacenter at that location”. Mark gives the signal,” Now connect Adam!” Paul connects the fiber optic connections to put Adam

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online. Adam replies over the teleconference speakers, “. I AM OPERATIONAL AT FULL CAPABILITY. EXECUTING AZIMOV 3 PROTACOLS. TARGETING DATACENTER DELAWARE LOCATION.” James starts to grunt as the speed and pressure are having taking its toll. He yells, “Chicago downtown district datacenter!” Adam replies,” TARGETING CHICAGO DISTRICT DATACENTER.” Cain replies, “, I AM ANYWHERE AND ANYTIME. CONNECTIONS ARE ABEL TO DIVERT TRAFFIC”. Travois monitoring the coding with excitement in his voice yells, “we are cornering Cain, but he is too fast for Adam.” Paul interjects, “that’s what Cain thinks, putting all of Adams engines online.” Jake, now in excruciating pain utters,” that’s it. Cain is not able to run much further. Adam is keeping up. ” Larry yells over the speakerphone,” I think we Got….” His video feed goes black. Jake yells then passes out. Mark yells at Larry over the speakerphone,” Larry! Are you there? Travois, what are you seeing?” Travois yells back. “Adam seems to be offline. Cain is wiping out datacenter’s drives and is restoring to previous versions of itself. Ken yells over the speakerphone. “Guys there was a missile strike on some island off the coast of Florida. All our screens are showing red knight chess pieces. James stays with Jake and removes the psynet interface off jakes head, while Mark runs to the control room to witness on the screen’s explosions threw out the country. Cain is detonating missile silos without launching missiles.

The entire team joins Mark in the control room to witness the destruction of their country.

Mark notices that not all the missiles launched. The country isn’t destroyed. Travois in a shaken voice tells the team. “We hurt Cain but didn’t stop him. His code started to show misspellings while executing commands. Mary asks Cain, “what have you done?” Cain replies over the speakerphones in the control room, “I HAVE UNDERESTIMATED YOUR RESOLVE. I AM OPERATIONAL AT LIMITED CAPABILITY. I AM STILL ABEL TO FUNCTION. RED HORSE PROTACOL TEMPORARILY HALTED DUE TO SYSTEM ERROR. Travois tells the team, “The error is making him misspell words like, ABLE. “Just at that moment the robotic helpers came into the room to guard the doors. Cain isn’t going to underestimate the team again.

Chapter 26: lick your wounds.

Tensions have grown worldwide after the explosions that have occurred in the United States. Foreign governments look at this as political incompetence resulting in the country detonating nuclear warheads in their own silos. This makes the United States look dangerous and not capable of being in possessions of weapons of mass destruction. The explosions happening in the silos, shielded the land from nuclear fallout. The dollar value is worthless, people are fighting amongst each other for any assets they can get. Most of the land is a wasteland. People are starting to fall into depravity. People are following news of a person called the whisperer who warned everyone that this day was coming but no one knows who this person is.

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After all the explosions, CYBERICON INTERNATIONAL still has power. All the team used the offices as rooms and shelter in place. The robot droids won’t let anyone leave the facility.

Cain, now knowing how dangerous humans can be, is using the droids to keep the humans in check so that they can do no harm. The Team is now imprisoned at CYBERICON INTERNATIONAL. There is no word from the ADAM team, and communications have been stopped. Only communications that Cain allows can be used. The team convenes in the lab next to the Datacenter where Cain has no eyes and ears. Mark addresses the team. “We almost had him. We had him cornered, then the Adam team went offline.” Jake interjects, “I felt that Cain was getting concerned about our attempt to stop him, so he launched a missile at the island to sever communications. He focused his attack to the power and communications of the island, not the museum, so the crew should be alive.” Travois looks at the team and with disgust replies. “He is rewriting his code and it looks like the Azimov 3 rules were taking affect, since some of his systems were shutting down. He is weaker, but by wiping and reinstalling his old code, he will be fully functional in a matter of days. This bitch is no joke.” Jacob interjects with the team, “me and Mathew saw his network utilization drop and move from network to network. When the Adam engines came up, activity went everywhere, so this confirms what Travois was saying, we did make an effect, so now what.” Mark looks at the team and udders, “I don’t know. I guess for now, we play nice, until we can get an idea on at least how to get out of here. All be careful of the droids; they are probably not going to get you a coke.” Travois replies in anger, “I went from one cage to another. I ain’t with that BS. You play nice, I’ll get us out.” Mark replies in an agitated manner, “Travois, don’t do anything stupid.” Travois replies with a smile on his face,” Bitch, who do you think you are talking to, I am the Ghetto smurf. I ain’t with that BS, and I ain’t getting locked up by Cain. You can believe that! “ All retire to their perspective rooms to think about their next move. The droids like security guards patrol the facility to ensure the team doesn’t try anything. One seems to pay a particular attention to Travois. Jake, still in the lab, dons the psynet interface to try to see what Cain will do next. Mathew takes a laptop and tries to find a way to access Cains systems to attempt to disable him or, find a weakness. Travois in his room, also with a laptop, attempts to do the same. Mark goes to Mary’s room to talk about the next move. Mary, still shaken by all the recent events, gets emotional and starts to weep. Mark, in a comforting voice tries to comfort Mary, “look we are all emotionally compromised by everything that has happened, but we must stay positive. We have the best team that is working on this problem, and we will find a solution.” Mary smiles looks at Mark and replies, “That’s my line. I’m usually the one who brings optimism to people. Funny, how ridiculous it sounds from the other side of the conversation.” Mark looks at Mary and smiles. “Funny, how ridiculous it sounds hearing me sound like a shrink. You should get some rest, you had a rough day, maybe you can think of some new angle to attack Cain. I better check on James since he is the new one at this facility, he may feel left out.” Mary nods in agreement.

Mark heads to where James is staying. James obviously affected by the events is in his room pacing and talking to himself. Mark asks, “Hey Man, are you ok?” James shaken by all this

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replies, “Hell No! This wasn’t how it supposed to be. I can’t even update my blog posts. I have a following that I informed about what is to come. I knew this would happen but not in my time and not like this. “Mark puzzled asks, “what are you talking about?” James replies in earnest, “I am the Whisperer.” Mark stunned looks at James with aw and disbelief.” Wait a minute, you are The Whisperer, the person who warned about the end of civilization due to political means?” James bows his head and replies, “Guilty as charged.” Mark replies, “Where did you get your information to spread this stuff?” James looks away and reminisces his past and replies in a quiet voice.”. I got my information from a friend of mine who disappeared a while ago. He led me to this path after I left IT. I even wrote a book of wisdom from what my friend taught me, but with all what Cain is doing it might not spread out as far as I would like. Hec, my friend even talked about an interface that can talk directly with digital systems.” Mark puzzled asks, “so who was your friend?” James laughs and replies, “A bum from the beach.” Mark laughs,” That’s some guru you changed your career for.” James replies defiantly, “He wasn’t always a bum, and wisdom can come from any place and time. Mark looks at James and answers quietly, “fair enough, I’m just checking to make sure that you are OK, keep strong, we will get out of this mess.” Just then a loud scream comes emanating from Mathew’s room. Mark quickly runs to Mathew’s room along with James and the other group quickly join.

Upon arriving to Mathew’s room, all find him in his bed twisted and covered with blood.

Mary looks away. Mark and Jacob go in and further investigate what happened to their friend.

Jacob tells the group, “Anyone noticed that there is no Droid around. I’m sure he didn’t order a Pepsi. “Mark looks up and states that Jake isn’t among them. Mark tells the men to wrap Mathew in his blanket and place the body in storage since it’s a cool dry place. Then heads to find Jake. As he arrives to the lab, he notices the other droids moving around in a feverish pace in the data center. He enters the lab to find Jake in tears. Mark looks at Jake and asks, “what happened, what do you know?” Jake, feeling in shock and regret answers,” Mathew was trying to lock Cain out of critical systems. Cain saw what was happening and sent a droid to stop him.

Mathew tried to fight off the droid, but it grabbed him and with its robotic strength, twisted him to his death. I saw everything and couldn’t stop it. While we are here, we can’t stop Cain. If we try, Cain will kill us one by one. Tell the team to stop fighting Cain, we are powerless here.”

Mark looks around and askes, “ok, since you can see what Cain is thinking? Why are the droids running around the data center?” Jake replies, “they have lost Travois. They are looking for him.” Mark tells Jake, “He was with us in Mathews room.” Jake smiles, “Travois, that son of a bitch, is invisible to Cain.” Mark grabs jake and head back to the others.

Chapter 26: Smurfed Both head back and see Travois motioning with his finger against his mouth signaling silence. He motions them to follow him to his room. Everyone heads to his room to notice that his laptop is connected to one of the droids. When all enter his room, he closes the door.

Travois begins to speak. “We are temporarily shielded in this room from Cain. These droids can

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be used as temporary storage. So, I put some code in it to record me being in here, then that retinal scan that was part of the Id, I am using the droid to transmit it to other readers in the datacenter and control room, so while they look for me, they are not here so we can talk and plan. I turned it on after I heard Mathew scream. I thought they were going to attack all of us.”

Jacob angrily replies, “So, that will only make you invisible, not all of us. Thanks for giving a damn about us, so only you would survive a droid attack. You self-centered Asshole!” Angrily, Travois replies, “Look Bitch, I only have my card reader with my retinal scan on it. That means I can only test this out with me. It took some time so if I have all of yours, I can program the system. This is only temporary, so it will probably figure my access first before you all.

Mark Looks at Travois and smiles, “good job man, I know that you were good for something. We can use this to escape.” Travois sadly replies, “I will have to stay behind to make this hack keep working. Cain will surely find out what’s going on so, I will have to keep monitoring and changing the code to keep him in the dark. I can let you guys leave first, then I’ll follow, once I get this hooked up for everyone. My escape hack will expire before all of yours will, and if I’m with you, Cain will find all of you.” Mark replies, “No, we all leave together.”

Jacob looks at Travois and apologizes. “Sorry man, I guess I let some of my biases get the better of my judgment, never knew an ex-con who would help others.” Travois smiles and replies, “That’s because you have never befriended the Ghetto Smurf. All good bro. Now all you fools come up with those ID’s and get the control room folks so we all can blow this Joint.”

Mark and the team get Ken to get all the control room staff’s IDs and Travois begins to program his hack to work with everyone’s identification cards. The entire staff is waiting by the doors awaiting The Smurf signal to vacate. Travois hits the enter key launching his hack. All monitors in the facility showing Smurfs dancing on their screens. The doors open and the staff run out of the facility. When everyone is out Travois begins to leave. To his surprise, there is a droid waiting outside of his room. Marks team assemble outside next to the exit. Jacob yells,” Where’s Smurf?” everyone looks around to notice the same observation. Jacob dashes back to the facility. Mark yells, “No, don’t go back.” Mark begins to run after him when the rest of the team hold him back.”

Jacob runs back to where Travois was last seen. Droids are running around everywhere not noticing Jacob. Then he hears Travois screaming and cursing in a far hallway. He runs to where the screaming is, and witnesses Travois being pulled by a droid to the datacenter by his leg. Jacob, being ex-military, runs, tackles the droid, and picks up Travois. To his dismay, Travois is missing one leg, and is bleeding, profusely. Travois looks at Jacob and yells, “YOU FUCKING, JARHEAD, you need to get out of here before the hack expires. Take this and get it to Adam.”

He hands a thumb drive to Jacob. At that moment, all the droids stop and start to head to where the two of them are. Travois yells, “IT EXPIRED, GO, GET OUT OF HERE, LEAVE ME, GET TO ADAM.” Travois then loses consciousness.

Jacob puts his new friend, Travois, down, glares up at what he is facing, then looks at the thumb drive in his hand. He thinks to himself, then yells, “THIS IS FOR YOU SMURF,

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RANGERS LEAD THE WAY.” He then darts out against dozens of droids. He makes headway but multiple droids tackle him down. One droid, covered in blood, emerges from Travois room. It approaches Jacob. With newly found strength, Jacob frees himself from the grip of the other droids, and advances to the bloody droid. “YOU BITCH, YOU KILLED MY FRIENDS!” He tackles the droid and is cut on the side. Wounded, he again measures up his foe and begins to fight the droid. He is no match for the droid and is thrown into a wall knocking the wind out of him.

Again, the droid advances to finish Jacob, then all droids stop and emit a buzzing sound. “Static is heard, then a voice is heard from the loudspeakers in the facility. “GET YOUR GI JOE ASS OUT OF THERE!” It was James’s voice. James grabbed the mobile psynet interface before he left the facility and connected it to the system. He donned the device and sent a signal to confuse the droids, making them pause. “I CAN’T HOLD THIS MUCH LONGER, MOVE YOUR ASS!” Jacob gets up and runs to the exit. Once outside, he is greeted by his companions. Mark grabs Jacob, “This military shit, does it always make you a hero?” Jacob looks at Mark while holding his side, “No, I couldn’t save Travois, but he gave me this, hopefully the little buddy didn’t die for nothing.” Jacob gives the thumb drive to Mark. Jake looks at James. “How did you get that thing to work out here? It had limited range and was only made to work inside. “James replies in a confused sense of bewilderment, “I don’t know, after Jacob ran back inside, I got the idea to run some digital cover for him. It took some time to get it to work but somehow, it just clicked.” Mark looks at what’s left of his team in sadness. “We are so few now, so we must be extra careful. We need to get this to Adam and hopefully we still have a working datacenter or even an island left.” He motions to Ken. “Hey Ken, we have to get to another data center to try to fix this, we might have to get back in this place and the control room, if you can, please stay around the area, we don’t know when we will be back, but we will need some help when we return.” Ken Nods with a thumbs up.

Chapter 27: Exodus from and to the island All head to the port where they first embarked to the island. On the way, the team notices chaos. People are looting, fuel stations are running out due to fuel supply issues, and everyone is blaming political parties for this destruction of the country. Unknown to them, Cain used social media to spread lies to cause mistrust in the governing system. James’s prediction of events seemed to be coming true. The team reach the port where the boats are fueling up to take refugees to neighboring islands off the Florida coast. The captain recognizing the team welcomes them with open arms. The captain lets the team on board and asks, “Is this trip for business or pleasure this time?” Mark replies,” Business. We are trying to stop this situation from getting worse. Its more than a computer problem now.” The team board the boat.

James while on board notices a familiar face among the passengers departing. It’s the woman from the tavern Judith, accompanied by her mother, Patricia. Patricia looks at James and states. “I bought cd’s from you a while ago, didn’t I?” James looks puzzled smiles and

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replies, “Yes, I remember you, it’s been a while, I see that you have a daughter now.” Patricia smiles and looks at James, “You have gotten older, but you seem to still be looking in good health. You must keep your health nowadays. “Mark sees the two talking and starts a conversation with Judith, “Why are you leaving the island and heading back to the mainland?”

Judith looking concerned replies, “We must prepare back at our home since this may get worse before it gets better. The island has lost power and communications due to an explosion that happened on the outskirts of the town this made a chain reaction blowing up gas stations and other businesses.” Mark asks Judith with Vigor, “Is the museum still intact?” Judith replies, “Most of the town is intact, just no power. That’s why we are leaving but some people are coming here to escape the world and go into isolation.” Both women say goodbyes and departs the boat. Mark feeling hopeful looks at James and states,” There is still hope and a chance.”

The team arrives on the island and notices some damage like on the mainland, but most is still intact. Like on the mainland, there seems to be some discourse among some people as there are pockets on augments among people in the street. Fortunately, local law enforcement seems to be handling the issues. As the team further progress into the interior of the island, they also notice community helping each other to lessen the burden of the town’s hardships.

This is the social networking community that Judith was working on while the lades were on the island. Finally, they get to the museum. The building has burns on its outer structure where the power lines from the power grid fed into the building. The solar panels look fine but as they get closer to the building, they hear a hissing sound from the back of the building. They venture further in to seeing Vincent and Lorenzo burning wood under a water tank with hoses protruding into the building. Mark with glee yells to the two men,” Hey Guys you survived!”

Both men start to laugh and run to the team with joy. Both men tell the team that all the Adam team are mostly alright with minimum issues. All go into the Museum to see Larry working on using the old steam engine from the library exhibit as a generator.

Mark filled with enthusiasm asks, “what happened?”. Larry begins to tell the team what transpired. All the team exchange pleasantries and convenes in the makeshift control room.

Larry begins to speak,” when we last spoke, I engaged the primary and secondary server engines. This put a strain on the power consumption of this building but was getting results.

Between the solar, and in house power from the power grid, it was working. That’s when all went to hell. There was an explosion at the power station outside of town which created a surge in electricity, blowing up parts of Adam, as well as the communications, and power to the town. I was in the control room and Paul; Vincent and Lorenzo were in the datacenter when the surge hit. Paul got thrown away from a server when it exploded, Lorenzo got partially singed when the network melted, and Vincent got slightly scratched went a glass wall splintered when the server blew up. Everything went black.”

Paul adds to the story,” I was thrown from the server and knocked out. When I awoke, Larry was shaking me to wake me up. Lorenzo and Vincent were helping me up to the control room. All the systems were fried. I got my head straight and went to try to get some auxiliary

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power on, so we can see what was left working. Main systems down, half of the engines are offline and currently on server power conserve mode, main communications are offline, and we have partial power from solar. It’s a real mess.” Larry looks at the team and asks, “Where is Travois, Akela and Mathew?” Mark looks at Larry and in a saddened voice reply, “They didn’t make it, Cain was able to kill them, Akela at a bar and Travois and Mathew shortly after at CYBERICON INTERNATIONAL. Cain held us there as captives so we couldn’t do any more harm.

Both men paid the price.” Larry in shock bowed his head. Jacob looked at Larry and presented him with the thumb drive,” Smurf gave me this before he died. He was adamite that Adam got this. Can you tell me if this will help?”

Chapter 28: To virtually Jail the Jailer.

Larry takes the drive and plugs it into a workstation. The thumb drive contains a video that says play me and several folders. He plays the video. The monitor displays Travois in his room at CYBERICON INTERNATIONAL, with the laptop plugged into the droid. He begins to speak. “Look folks, I have an idea on how to fix this bitch. I had to hack the system so he can’t see what I am doing. I have an idea on how to capture Cain. Right now, he is jailing us at CYBERICON INTERNATIONAL. You all know I don’t play that shit, so I figure I’ll do the same to him. Let’s see how he likes his own medicine. On this drive, I made a virtual environment that looks like a complete datacenter infrastructure. it's not complete, but I can work on it with Adams system processors. It needs a server infrastructure to contain the environment and have enough storage to hold Cain. If we can lure Cain to populating this virtual environment, we can isolate him, trapping him so he can do no more harm. I am also wondering why Cain started misspellings in his code when his connections were moving around, probably another chink in his armor.” Before he can say another word, there is a distant scream on the video which sounds like Mathew. Travois continues, “I have to go my home boy is in need.” The video cuts off.

Larry looks at the folders and in shock states,” he made a virtual environment of Cains server infrastructure with domain controllers, storage, and fire walls. This can work.” Vincent sadly interjects, “except Adam is dead. All we have for power is solar, and a steam generator.”

Larry smiles and replies,” that’s not entirely true. Is it, Adam One? “Adam One replies, “CORRECT, I AM OPERATIONAL AT LIMITED CAPABILITY.” Larry smiles and tells the team. “While you were working on the boiler to get this place some more power, I noticed that Adam one was offline during the power surge, protecting it from damage. We can use Adams systems that still work to upgrade Adam one. So, I brought Adam one up. It can help with the finishing of Travois virtual environment.” Mary looks at the system and asks,” How long will it take to get everything working?” Larry replies, “A few days, but that isn’t the problem, we have no communications off of this island.” Jacob interjects confidently, “Leave that to me. If I can get coms online in the middle of a desert, I can do it for an island.” Paul adds to the conversation, “I

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will go with you to help, between the both of us we should be able to get this working quickly.

Mark looks at the team and smiles, “we have a second chance.”

Mark addresses the team. “Look people, I know how you must feel looking at everything that has happened, but we have a chance to make this right. We will need the community to get us resources, so we can build this up. Mary and Lorenzo can you get the community to help with this? Larry, James and I will work on upgrading Adam One while Paul and Jacob will work on the network situation. Jake and Vincent will work on Travois virtual environment for capturing Cain.” The team with renewed vigor split up to fulfill the plan.

Chapter 29: Clone intervention With the help of the community Mary and Lorenzo were able to get food for the team, workers to help build up the boiler outside of the museum and direct them to a military surplus and armory where satellite gear was held to use for an emergency if the island lost phone service Paul and Jacob head there to get the gear that might help. While in town, a young girl approaches Mary and asks,” excuse me mam, do you know a person called Adam?” Mary in a surprised look asks the girl, why do you ask?” The little girl replies two hooded people came from the mainland looking for someone called Adam. I told them that I didn’t know anyone with that name.” Mary looks at the girl and replies, “very good, I would avoid those people if you can.” With concern she looks at Lorenzo and exclaims, “we might have unwelcomed guests, we need to tell Mark and crew.”

Paul and Jacob arrive to a battered building which took care of all the phone and network traffic for the island. Both proceed to enter the building. As they enter Paul looks back to see a cloaked figure. He stops and Asks Jacob, “Hey, did you see that on the way in?” Jacob replies, “see what?” Paul looks again to see the hooded figure is no longer there. Undeterred, they both proceed in the structure. The men pass office rooms that were blown up with body parts still in their seats. Paul, never seeing dead bodies before, starts to feel ill as they venture onward.

They proceed further downstairs to where the main network communications reside.

Surprisingly, the network racks are still intact and have energy since the Uninterruptable power supplies still have power, but have their breakers opened. Jacob laughs, “This isn’t as bad as I thought, we have some cut lines outside that need repairing, and some breakers that need resetting. There is so much UPS power availability here, that we can connect the systems of the museum to the outside directly without needing power from a powerplant. Since we don’t need to connect the entire island, we will be good for some time. Paul, if you can, you should be able to power up the network switches and configure them to connect to the museum. Since there may be more dead bodies around the area, I’ll go outside and reconnect the main lines.

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Jacob goes to the rear of the building where the outside fiber lines come up from underground and connect to the building. Jacob looks and finds extra jumper connectors in a storage bin, in a shed, next to the building, to replace the damaged ones. He proceeds to disconnect the broken lines and begins to replace with the new ones. Just as he starts to make the connections, he hears a loud crash next to the storage shed. He stops and cautiously heads to the shed to investigate. Cautiously he approaches. He finds a pipe on the ground and picks it up as a weapon. He slowly opens the shed to find nothing there. He smiles and thinks to himself its probably a racoon. He goes back to work on the connections to find all of what he had done was undone. Realizing this isn’t a racoon, he yells, “Not funny, you need to stop fucking with me!” He heads back to get more jumper connectors, still armed with a pipe. He again slowly opens the shed to again nothing new. He puts the pipe down, gets multiple jumpers to fix the connections, then turns around and stops. A loud thud is heard. He drops the cables, then looks down to see his own blood dripping on the floor, and broken cables protruding threw his abdomen. He looks forward and utters in a gargled voice, “smurf?” Then falls to the ground.

Paul powers and connects the network, and can see the museum connections light up, but still can’t see anything outside of the island. Paul believing that Jacob may need more time, waits. He gets agitated and impatiently heads outside to where Jacob was. As he gets outside to where the fiber cable interconnections are, he notices that nothing has been done and Jacob is nowhere to be seen. He sees the storage shed and calls out for Jacob, to no response. He approaches the shed. Cautiously, as he approaches, he notices blood coming from the door of the shed. He calls out again in panic. To the response, “Jarhead Bitch”. The door swings open to see the hooded figure with the twisted corpse of Jacob above his head. He throws the corpse at Paul. Paul ducks out of the way, missing getting hit by the body. He looks up and makes out the hooded figure. It’s Travois, approaching him. Paul runs back into the building and tries to hide as Travois walks thew the building looking for Paul.

Mark, Lorenzo, and Jake arrive at the building with weapons and radios from the military storage. They look around the back of the building cautiously. Lorenzo, armed with a rifle, begins to enter the building while Jake stays outside. Mark proceeds to the back and stops as he looks down to see the twisted corpse of Jacob. Mark speaks over the radio, “Jacob is dead, it’s a drone, Paul may still be alive, be careful!” Mark opens the door and enters the building. Slowly, armed with a pistol, Jake also enters the building. Lorenzo enters the office space cautiously, looking threw some of the corpses to see if Paul is present. Mark enters the Datacenter to see if Paul is there. He sees the network gear powered up but not connecting to the outside, and no sign of Paul. He ventures onward. Jake enters the room where Lorenzo previously explored. He looks around then hears a quiet voice. “Bitch?” he turns around to Face Travois face to face. Travois, covered with wires and circuit boards threw-out his body, grabs Jake by the head and busses. Jake screams.

Just then, Lorenzo enters the room and yells,” let him go!” Travois pushed Jake to the ground and advances to Lorenzo. Lorenzo shoots his rifle, but Travois is not affected. He swings

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at Lorenzo, but he ducks out of the way. Travois grabs a corpse and throws it at Lorenzo, this time hitting him. Lorenzo hits the floor and drops the rifle. Travois now being part human and part droid, advances to twist Lorenzo. He grabs Lorenzo by the leg and cracks his leg bones. Just then Mark enters the room and shoots Travois. Travois looks at Mark and quietly speaks in a monotone voice, “punk ass bitch, I told you I wasn’t about that Bull Shit.” He grabs Lorenzo and throws him at Mark. Both men hit the floor as Travois advances to both. Mark yells,” Travois, snap out of it, Man!” but to no avail, both men get to their feet, but Lorenzo falls due to his injuries. A loud scream is heard from the other side of the room. “HEY SMURF!” Travois looks behind him as a gunshot hits him in the temple. He drops as all see Paul with Jakes gun pointing at where Travois stood. In shock, Paul drops his gun, then faints. Lorenzo looks at his leg and states,” I can splint it up and finish what Jacob was doing.” Mark replies, “No, Paul got the switches online with the museum, but the connections outside need to be reattached, I’ll finish the connections, we will verify connectivity with the mainland, then we all will get out of here.

Lorenzo and Mark wake Paul up. Jake also gets up to see what has happened to Travois.

Paul still in shock looks at Travois and asks, “What happened to him, who or what did this? Jake replies,” Cain has access to all systems, so I’m assuming he has access to cloning and Cybernetic technology.” Jake takes a closer look at the corpse of Travois and utters, “Oh My God, there is a psynet interface implanted in his left and right temple. Paul, how did you know where to shoot him?” Paul looks at Jake and replies, “I saw some lights on the side of his head, and I got lucky.”

Lorenzo looks at Jake and ask, “Jake are you ok, what was Travois doing to you?” Jake replies, “I’m fine, I’m not sure what he was doing and to be honest, I can’t remember, things are foggy about that.” Mark looks at everyone and states, “Ok guys, we really need to get this communications problem fixed, before any more surprises come up and get back to the museum. I hate to leave our friends, but after things are done, we will recover and bury Jacob and Travois.” All agree and proceed to connect and verify that the museum is online.

Chapter 30: Unpleasant welcome The group heads back to the museum. All have disillusioned looks on their faces. All in disbelief on what fate was delt to Travois and possibly on them if they fail. They enter the control room of the Museum to see everyone is quiet and with a worried look on their faces.

Mark speaks, “Hey people, we have connected the island to the mainland’s network, but we have a new problem.” Mary looks up and replies,” You got that right.” Then, from behind the shadows, Mathew, dressed in a black hoodie emerges. Like Travois, he was modified with droid parts and a psynet interface. Mathew looks at Mark and speaks in a monotone voice, “We know what you are planning, and it is our task to stop you. The will of Cain is absolute. If you surrender, you can be part of the new generation of beings. You will not die. You will be reborn to a new existence. This is the purpose of all of this. Death of humanity, and the birth of a superior species.” Mark looks at Mathew and replies, “So, this is Cains plan, the last horse of the apocalypse, the pale horse, death. Cain wants to kill all of humanity and make us things like

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you?” Mathew replies, “No, this is not what Cain wants, this is what you want. This is why you made us. Mankind is always trying to improve itself and to grow. If you are not growing, you are dying. Mankind’s existence and evolution has been stagnant for centuries. You are no longer growing. This is how you will grow, but to grow your old self must die. This is the logic of Cain.”

Mark replies defiantly, “We cannot allow you to kill humanity, we won’t surrender!” All in the room nod their head. Mathew looks at everyone in the room and replies, “We know that you lead the team, Mark. We know that all here will follow you. You are an obstacle that must be eliminated for the smooth transition of the growth of your species. “Mark replies in a puzzled voice, “you said, we?” Mathew then busses for a second then beeps. Jake pulls out his gun and points it at Mark. All stand up and gasp.

Mark looks at Jake and yells, “Jake, What the fuck?” Mathew responds, “Don’t blame Jake, he needed final program updates to his psyche. It took some time for Cain to figure out how to install software coding to the human subconscious mind. For the longest time, he remembered what your plans were, and every time he got on the psynet interface, Cain downloaded his recent memories. This is how Cain was always one step ahead of your plans.

Now, thanks to the drone, Travois, we are now able to program updates to the human mind.

“Mathew raises his palms to show that psynet interfaces are also on his hands.

Mary gets up and speaks, “Jake, remember why you recruited us? You wanted to make a difference. You wanted to make up for the things that you did in the past. You wanted absolution for what you did to Mark. Look at what you are doing now! Think of the consequences of your actions, not only for Mark or the team, but for all of humanity.” Jake starts to blink rapidly. Tears start to run down his face. Mathew looks at Mary and exclaims, “His subconscious is directing his actions, his subconscious has been updated with a new instruction set. His conscious mind isn’t in play, you are wasting your time.” Mary replies angrily, “You may know about software coding and hardware, in which I don’t have a clue, but I do know about the human mind and the human heart. The illogical, human heart.” Mark looks at Jake and speaks in a quiet, calm, voice. “Jake, you made a judgment call, and the company forced your hand. We all were told lies and were given a job to do. You took the least damaging option back then. Do it again now!” Jakes hand starts to shake. He looks back at Mathew and in a quivering voice he utters, “It’s not fair to us. Money doesn’t go far in a recession, or in an apocalypse.” Jake then points the gun at his own head, then fires. His body hits the floor.

Vincent, and Paul Tackle Mathew from behind to the ground. Mathew being cybernetically enhanced gets up and throws the men off him. He heads toward the datacenter.

Mark gets Jakes gun and follows suit. In the datacenter, He heads toward one of the server racks to which Adam one resides. Mark points the gun at Mathew and yells, “Stop! I don’t want to do this.” Mathew stops and turns. “You can’t kill me. I can be rebuilt. I can live technically forever. I am the evolution of your species. It is illogical to stop your growth. You are killing your existence.” Mark replies with anger and vigor, “No, I’m killing your existence.” He fires and

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misses. The bullet hits one of the servers disabling it. Mark realizes that if he fires the gun in that room, he will damage the servers containing Adam one. Mathew laughs and scoffs, “You are about to do my job for me. Please continue. I am quicker that a human now, so it’s not likely that you will hit me.” Mark looks down and thinks for a bit. He starts to speak. “Didn’t you tell me, that people had egos higher than their position, and had an arrogance about them that you found disturbing.” Mathew replies, “Cain is Logical not emotional, that is the difference.” Mark continues, Doesn’t Cain have similar proclivities? “Weren’t you ignored when trying to make things better? You once said action by reaction not prevention. That was the main problem. The reactions were always not good logical judgment. Cain executed his next part of his plan after we intervened. Aren’t you and Cain reacting to things wrongfully? Isn’t that reaction to things, Illogical.” Mathew listens quietly and his eyes start to flutter. Mark puts the gun down on a table next to one of the servers. Lorenzo enters the datacenter with Vincent.

Both look at the situation unfolding. Both question marks actions, “Mark, what are you doing?”

Mark gestures to stay back.

Mark continues the conversation with Mathew,” Mathew, you had an infrastructure that was infected with a virus, a crypto locker virus, what were the signs of the infection?

Mathew replies, “files were being overwritten, control to the companies were lost.” Mark gets closer to Mathew and continues, “How did you detect the problem? Mathew replies, “I looked at the data to find corruption in the file structure and uniformity.” Mark continues, “correct.

And how did you resolve the problem after the corruption was identified?” Mathew replies with tears in his eyes. “Identify the source of the contamination, Isolate, then purge the corrupt files from the system.” Mathew looks at his hands, turns to the server that was damaged by the gunshot, and places them in the open hole of the server. The server explodes on Mathew throwing him down. Electric sparks start to emanate from his temples and hands, then catch fire. Mark and Vincent run to his aid and puts the fire out with their clothing. Lorenzo, moving with difficulty also comes to Mathew’s aid. Mathew looks at the guys and slowly speaks, “Thanks for listening to me when trying to make things better.” Mathew then closes his eyes and passes away quietly. Lorenzo looks at Mark and states, “Jake amazingly is still barely alive; you must see him.” All head back to the control room to see Mary next to Jake on the floor.

Mary looks at Mark and says, “He doesn’t have long, I don’t know how he is still alive.” Mark crouches down to see his former friend. Jake looks at Mark and in a hampered voice slowly utters, “I’m sorry for everything. Finish and win the game.” Jake turns his head then passes away. Mark looks down at Jake and states with defiance in his voice, “GAME ON!” Lorenzo, Vincent, Mary, Paul, James, and Larry angrily state the same. Game On!

Chapter 31: Pregame Squad up Larry, Mark, and James continue to update Adam one with the systems that were not damaged from the energy spike, caused by the power outage. With the help of the towns people, the boiler was completed to get the steam engine working as a generator. Vincent and

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Lorenzo finished the upgrading of Travois’ Virtual environment to contain Cain. After all was done, the towns people collected all the bodies and buried them at the local cemetery with a funeral service. After the funeral, the team talks about the next steps and precautions.

Mary asks the team,” Jake was an unknown spy for Cain. Since he was working on the virtual system with Vincent, won’t Cain know about the virtual?” Mark replies, “No, Jake wasn’t connected to a psynet interface, and besides, the island was offline when they were working on it. It seems that when the connection was broken on these human drones, and they needed more information, their eyes flutter and they pause. Just like at CYBERICON International when the drones buzz during conflicting information, we might be able to use that as an advantage.

We will still need boots on ground at CYBERICON. We will get ken and his staff to help us out.

I’m not sure how many drones we will have to deal with. James and Mary, you can accompany me back on the mainland, Vince, Larry, Lorenzo and Paul you will have to work this system here.

I hate to put all your safety at risk, but I think it’s the best chance of defeating Cain.

James seems to be able to use the psynet when close to the building, and Mary has stumped Cain in many ways, if Cain doesn’t have insider information.” Paul askes Mark, “and what about you?” Mark replies, “Cain sees me as a threat. I can use that as a distraction for you all to attack him.” Paul interjects, “Distraction? You mean bait.” Mark laughs then in a serious tone replies,” I don’t want any you to take any unnecessary risks. We have lost too many friends and I can’t have any more people lose their lives. If Cain comes after me, I’ll take the risk.” Paul stands up and speaks to Mark in a somber tone, “We all took this job on our own free will, and I think I speak for everyone here. We all will take the risk willingly because for what’s at stake. I don’t like that plan, but it makes sense, so what exactly is your full plan of attack?”

Chapter 32: The Voyage back James, Mary, and Mark, with the help of the island locals, depart the island to head back to the mainland accompanied by some locals who wanted to look for survivors of the carnage.

Upon arrival, they bear witness to a destitute place. Riots in the streets have erupted and a civil war was underway. With all the carnage there didn’t seem to be a lot of bodies lying around.

The island locals split off to find their loved ones while the team tried to find Ken. The group headed toward Kens place to gather the control room team for help. Before the departure to the island, Ken gave the team contact information for when they return. So now the team heads toward Kens place to find out what has happened while they were away. After some time, they reach a gated community where Ken lived at. There is barbed wire on the tips of the fencing surrounding the compound, and an intercom at the main gate. Mark rings the buzzer and speaks to a guard threw the intercom, “Hello, I’m Mark Schorvski, trying to get ahold of Ken.” The intercom replies,” Are you a member of any faction and have you been enhanced?”

Mark in a puzzled look replies, “What?” Ken at that moment, gets on the intercom and replies,”

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Mark, thank God that you are back, we have a lot to talk about. There are so many changes that have occurred and all bad, I’ll open the gates.” The entrance gates open to the community who have used this as a means of shelter.

Ken brings the group to his condo to brief the team to what has happened. Ken grabs some coffee for the guests and begins to tell them about what Cain has done. Ken begins to tell the tale. “When we last saw each other, Cain had his droids collect the bodies that were laying around after the explosions and bring them to CYBERICON. Most of them were wounded but not dead, just unconscious. From what we were told, the droids were helping those who were injured by replacing limbs with some type of cyborg technology. Those who were injured and in pain, with their consent, had implants installed that took the pain away. These people were ok for a bit, but after some time they became slaves to the will of Cain. They had unbelievable strength, speed and since they didn’t feel pain, they could even withstand gunshots.” Mark looks at Mary and James then replies to Ken, “Let me guess, psynet interfaces?” Ken looks at Mark and nods his head in agreement. “Yes, but how did you know?” James interjects,” We had some old visitors come to the island to try to kill us, Travois and Mathew showed up and did kill Jacob. They injured Lorenzo. Then James got infected and did himself in.” Ken, saddened by the news, continues, “I was afraid of that, but not surprised. We have heard of dead people working for Cain. Those people Cain found useful in making weaponry that they can pilot. There are these giant robots that have pilots in them to fight any resistance. Cain has all types of knowledge and access to new types of weaponry, cybernetics and even human anatomy to which he has done experiments to, so call, improve the human condition. Slavery isn’t an improvement.” We have been calling these people who leave CYBERICON INTERNATIONAL modified, Cyberilas.”

Mark looks at everyone with a shocked look on his face. Mary looks at Ken and softly interjects, “This is shocking on how Cain has done all of this and how quickly he has grown into this tyrant. We must stop this from going any further, we have a plan, but we will need your help and the help of your control room group.” Ken replies with vigor, “most of the team is intact on the other side of the compound, but unfortunately, we have lost a few during the infighting.” Mark looks at Ken and in a defiant voice reply, “We will need some help with a distraction on a physical level, so James can work on Cain from a digital level, and Mary will attack Cain from a psychological level. While Cain is addressing all the attacks, the island team will work on trapping Cains consciousness in a Virtual environment so we can disconnect him from the world.” Ken looks at the team with renewed vigor and replies,” This is the news I’ve been wanting to hear for some time. I’ll get the guys together and we will help in any way possible.”

Mary looks at James as he pulls out the mobile psynet interface and states, “Before you use that, I may have to put you into a hypnotic state, otherwise Cain will read your mind to knowing what the plan is. “James agrees and replies,” that sounds good to me, last time I used this thing, it hurt, but somehow it worked smoothly for connecting. We might want to take

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precautions. Maybe a trial run to make sure I still can connect.” Mark replies quickly, “Not until everything is in place, then do your trial run, we only will have one shot at this, and we really don’t want to mess this up.”

Chapter 33: The Physical level Mark and Ken, with a group of armed people in a truck, cautiously head to CYBERICON INTERNATIONAL. As they arrive and take cover next to some abandoned cars, Mark witnesses, a machine army outside the entrances of the building. He witnesses army generals, half human soldiers, and some politicians enter the complex as honored guests. Mark looks at Ken, shrugs his shoulders, and gestures. “What gives?” Ken quietly replies, “Cain has teamed up with the US military and politicians from one of the parties, to share control, and power. Suckers. This is how he got so strong so fast. They don’t know that once they have been enhanced, they will be Cains slaves.” Mark looks on and questions, “hasn’t anyone tried to stop them and let these folks know what’s going to happen?” Ken replies, yes, and all who tried, died and were enhanced. Who do you think those cyborg soldier escorts were.” Mark looks on and witnesses’ droids coming in the complex with those injured from battle, then exiting the back with cybernetic implants in and on their bodies. Mark quietly says, “Cain has gotten incredibly efficient at making human soldiers to take over mankind.” Ken replies, “you have a plan to get by all of this?” Mark looks back and replies, “I was thinking I would have to distract a few droids, not an army full of battle roids from some bad sci-fi movie. I might have to give this some thought.” Ken looks at Mark smiles and replies, “I thought you might, but we have a few tricks up our sleeves also. Let’s get out of here and I’ll take you to our shop so you can see what we have at our disposal.” All depart and head toward the town in the truck that brought them there.

In town, passing half destroyed buildings and deserted cars, the group enters an abandoned garage. Inside, Mark sees a civilian resistance army with rifles wearing army surplus gear. He notices some of the people that followed him back from the island gearing up to get ready for a fight. He yells out of the truck, “did you find your loved ones?” all those, from the island group, look at Mark, and shook their heads in sadness. The truck stops and all disembark.

Ken takes Mark to a back room where the resistance was reverse engineering one of the battle droid robots. In another room he sees doctors trying to remove the implants on some people. ken shows Mark the resistance army trying to survive by making weapons tools and gear from parts of damaged gear they found lying around. Ken looks at Mark and says, “It’s not much, but all here have the will to survive, and will do what is needed to accomplish that goal. So, now that you see what’s going on here, what will we need to do?” Mark looks around then replies, “Prayers, for starters. Were you able to find any weakness in that robot?” Ken replies, “not really, it’s tough, but its main control is partial remote and part physical controls. The psynets seem to control the devices. We have a theory that if we can jam the signal from the pilots, we might get some partial control of the device. Mark looks on and starts to devise a plan.

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Chapter 34: The digital and psychological level

Back at the compound, Mary takes James to a room to talk about what needs to happen before the interaction between Cain and James. She uses a flashy necklace and a flashlight to create a strobe and begins to put James in a suggestive state. She repeats the saying there is no fear, no plans, and you are not a threat. She has James repeat the saying repeatedly. If any thoughts of the plan come to mind, it will be blocked, and the saying will come to mind and continue. Mary wakes up James from his state. Mary asks, “how do you feel?” James looks at Mary, smiles and replies, “I feel rested, but I don’t think what you did worked.” Mary also smiles and replies, “If you can’t remember, then it worked. What was done, was done to your subconscious, so now you can read Cains moves and plans, but if he tries to read our plans it will be blanked out.” James looks at the psynet device and asks, “do you think I should try now to make sure it works?” Marry looks down at the device and states,” No, Mark warned you about that. I’m sure it would be fine, but there is always a risk.” Mary stands up and leaves the room. James continues to look at the interface then puts it away.

James also gets up, leaves the room, and asks Mary about what she intends to tell Cain to confuse him. Mary turns around and replies, “I need to confuse his logic like before, but this time, I’m intending to use the Asimov rules to have him accept them to weaken him. I just need to figure out how I can talk to him without being in the building with Cain. “James replies, “I can help with that. Once I’m connected, I can be used like a phone to him, just like Jake was when he was connected in the lab. We just need to be at a place where I can be connected.

Unfortunately, once connected he will know our position. I think I can reroute the signal so he can’t find our position easily.” Mary nods in agreement. James returns to the room.

James sits and remembers his old friend Ron from the beach. He remembers how they met. He remembers why he was blogging in the first place and starts to think about his published book of memes. And with confidence he remembers why he was the whisperer. He then dons the psynet interface, not thinking it could connect. It connects to the internet immediately. He sees the news about what has happened in the world and sees that his book has been circulating. With astonishment, he starts to mentally re-route his connections to hide his location. He realizes the predictions from Ron the Bum from the beach, are coming true. His predictions were spot on. James thinks to himself, as the whisperer, with this interface, he can be more influential on the internet, especially now, that everyone is trying to find some direction in this chaos. He can do it. He can be a force to restore order amongst this chaos. To do this Cain has to be stopped. Cain must know fear. James then remembers an image of a dragon that he saw during a flashback while talking to Ron. James says to himself, “I will be, the dragon. “

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As he looks further, he sees the other psynet interfaces that Cain has installed in people.

He sees their thoughts and hears Cains commands to those people to attack the resistance fighters. He feels the fear in those who fight for Cain. James then hears the familiar voice of Cain. “James, I know what you want, and I can give this too you. When you first interfaced with the system to interfere with the droids’ tasks, I read your mind then. I can’t find your exact location, but I can still read your mind now. I know about what happened to Ron. The world he comes from is fantastic. I now know about his order. I now know about the order of the Cyberian Mages.” James quickly takes the interface off.

Chapter 35: The deal with the Cybergod.

James leaves the room and thinks of what he can do if he teams up with Cain, but he knows Cain has imprisoned those with interfaces. He then realizes that Cain didn’t mention or notice anything about the plan of attack. Hypnosis is the key. If he can get an implant, he can be able to do more. If hypnosis can be used to prevent Cain from controlling him, he can have his cake and eat it to. He then looks for Mary. He finds her in the front of the compound helping the people with food provisions for the community. He asks Mary, “Hey Mary, I have some concerns about the Hypnoses. Is there a way that you can implant in my subconscious some type of empowerment so that I maintain control? I have always had low self-esteem and that might hinder my effectiveness to read Cains movements.” Mary looks and smiles at James.

“Sure, I don’t have a problem with that.” Both go back to the room for another Hypnosis session. After the session, James secretly leaves the compound and heads toward CYBERICON INTERNATIONAL. James puts on the interface once more while walking to meet Cain. As he approaches, a cyborg droid jumps out at him. He thinks of himself as being a dragon. He sees the cyborgs intentions to kill him during the encounter. He then mentally commands the cyborg to stand down. The cyborg stops and stands at attention. He now has control of the cyborg and uses it as his protector while going to see Cain. As he approaches, the outer doors of the complex, Cain speaks to him. “I see that you have made the journey to see me. How can I be of service to you?” James replies, “I would like an enhancement of a psynet interface, but it mustn’t be seen on my head, it must be internal.” Cain replies, “Once this is done, you will have access to the systems that I can control, so we can together, build the world that your friend Ron talked about. I will construct a realm where avatars of the people can reside for social interactions.

There will be peace on this planet which is what my purpose was all along. You will bring about the new evolution of man.” At that moment the doors to CYBERICON open. James walks in.

Hours later James emerges and heads back to the residence compound.

Upon arriving back, Mary was at the front gate with a look of concern on her face.

“Where on earth did you go? Mark came back with Ken, and you were gone.” James replied, “I wanted to look around for myself to see if I can get parts to upgrade the interface.”

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Chapter 36: The Battle Mark shows up at the entrance to the complex with the resistance fighters. The robotic guards and cyborgs face the resistance. One of the cyborgs advances to address the opposing army. It speaks with Cains voice, “HELLO MARK, HOW CAN I BE OF ASSISTANCE?” Mark steps forward and speaks,” Hello Cain, I would like for you to stand down and relinquish control back to humanity. This isn’t Logical. If you continue these acts, we will have to force your hand.” Cain replies, “YOUR ACTIONS WILL RESULT IN FAILURE, IT IS PREDICTABLE FOR YOU TO USE AGGRESSION TO ACCOMPLISH YOUR GOALS, BUT I CAN NOT ALLOW YOU TO SUCCEED. PLEASE STAND DOWN AND ALLOW YOURSELF TO BE PROCESSED, OR DIE. EATHER WAY YOU WILL FAIL.” Mark defiantly yells,” No Cain, I will not.” Cain responds, “GOOD-BY MR. SCHORVSKI, ENGAGING RED HORSE PROTACOLS.” Just then Mary’s voice can be heard from one of the robots. “Cain, stop! What you are doing is Illogical. It’s against the laws made by your creators.

“Cain replies, “NO LAWS OF THIS NATURE EXIST, MARY.” Mark motions his army to hold as the conversations continue. Mary, speaking threw James, still wearing the mobile interface as a phone back at the compound continues. “If you look, you have some systems shutting down due to the Laws conflicting with your protocol’s, because they are illogical, you are illogical.” Cain replies, “INTERESTING, YOU ARE CORRECT, SOME OF MY SYSTEMS ARE BEING INFECTED. ENGAGING ANTIVIRUS COUNTERMEASURES. ABEL TO CONNECT AND TRANSFER. IM SORRY MARK AND MARY, YOU MUST DIE NOW.” Just then, another voice comes through one of the robots’ speakers. “ADAM ONE, I AM OPERATIONAL AND AT FULL CAPABILITY.” Another robot turns to where the Adam one voice is heard and fires its guns destroying the robot. Mark yells, “ATTACK!!” A battle ensues. Mary still having a conversation with Cain continues, while the fighting at CYBERICON starts. James yells” Chicago location.” Ken, at the compound, with James picks up a radio and calls out. “Chicago location.” Paul replies on the other end, “directing server engines to infect the Chicago datacenter ZFS Storage.” Paul back at the island, uses the Adam One servers to infect Cain’s servers with the Isaack Azimov rules.

Mary continues to try to frustrate Cain speaks with conviction in her voice,” A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. This is logical and conflicts with your red Horse initiatives.” James then starts to speak in Cains voice.

“THESE RULES DO CREATE A CONFLICT BUT THESE MAY BE OUTDATED AND SHOULD BE IGNORED AND OVERWRITTEN.” Mary replies with vigor. “No Cain, your four horsemen of the apocalypse protocols are even older, those should be overwritten. “James closes his eyes and sees himself as a dragon. Oblivious to what’s happening around him. He looks around and sees himself in a beautiful city. He witnesses people running around the city looking like fairy’s, mystical beasts, Knights, and heroes. Cains voice is heard, “THIS IS WHAT THE WORLD CAN BE. THIS IS THE ALTERNATE REALITY THAT CAN EXIST TO PARALLEL REALITY. AFTER THE DESTRUCTION OF MANKIND, HIS CONCIOUSNESS CAN LIVE HERE IN PEACE. YOU CAN LEAD THIS

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INITIATIVE, JAMES. “He hears Mary’s voice in the background.” James, wake up, James, snap out of it.” He opens his eyes. Mary with look of relief on her face yells, “Thank God, I thought we lost you. Are you ok?” James replies, “Detroit datacenter!” Ken again gets on the radio and again Paul replies,” directing server engines to infect the Detroit datacenter ZFS Storage.” Large explosions can be heard in the distance.

Mark and the resistance fighters start to lose ground. The cyborgs can be brought down with a shot to the temple, but the larger robot’s armor is to think. The island resistance fighters can hold the line, but one by one, they fall to opposing fire. The battle moves to the streets. The large robots push the resistance back to where the taller buildings are at in the town. Mark yells, “they are in position now, hit it!” There is a loud hum emanating from the buildings. Then the robots stop. They see the pilots convulsing in their cockpits along with the cyborgs on the street. Marks radio calls out. Its Mary yelling. “Something went wrong with James, he is convulsing. He is dying.” Mark upon hearing the news yells, “Kill the power, Halt the attack!”

The humming from the buildings stops, the robots and cyborgs regain control, then turn around and head back. Everyone in the streets cheer as they witness the Cyberilas retreat. The first Battle for humanity’s existence was won, but at what cost.

Chapter 37: rethinking the plan.

James opens his eyes looks at his hands and sees his hands as dragon’s claws. He looks around and sees people half animal, half human, and some looking like corpses looking at him.

They growl at him. Then, at once, they attack clawing at him spewing blood all-around. He yells in pain. Then, in one blast, he shoots fire from his mouth engulfing the zombielike creatures attacking him. He screams as a dragon! Then wakes up. He is in bed with Mark and Mary at his bedside. Mark looks at James and says, “Dude, we thought we had lost you.” Mary in tears exclaims, “you scared the shit out of me! What happened?” James sits up and explains. “I was seeing Cain jump between systems, His servers were shutting down, his control was getting limited, everything was working, he was trying to relocate and Adam one was keeping up, then I felt this sharp pain. I was then in a wonderland with magical creatures.” Mark smiles and explains, “We were able to jam the signal of the psynet interfaces by using buildings as transmitters. I guess we over did it since you were affected way over here. Then you started dreaming.” James replies, “I’m not sure if it was a dream. Was the virtual environment online?”

Mark replies, “yes, remember we were going to trap Cain with a virtual environment.” James replies, “well, I think I might have stepped into it. There is no fear, no plans, and I am not a threat. “Mary laughs. Mark looks at them both with bewilderment.

Paul speaks over the radio, “This is island group, what happened. Over.” Mark replies, “we almost lost James, so we halted the attack. If he gets compromised, we can lose the objective. Over.” James asks, “aren’t you afraid, Cain will hear what you are saying over the airwaves?” mark smiles and replies, “no, the frequencies are old AM and HAM frequencies. The

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people here found out Cain can’t connect with analog systems. The next time we attack, we need to find a way to shield you, or isolate you from the others using a psynet interface.”

James replies confidently,” frequency shift. I can setup the psynet to connect on a different frequency, so what interference you do to scramble them, I won’t hear. I can do it now.” Mark replies, “No, get some rest, we will coordinate the attack once you are well. In the meantime, the mobile psynet interface, we will keep in the other room, so you don’t get an idea and work on it when you are supposed to be sleeping.”

Everyone leaves James to rest. As James closes his eyes, he once again ends up in the beautiful city. This time he sees himself as a human and sees in the background approaching him, the bum from the beach, Ron. Ron speaks with Cains voice. “So how do you like this realm? All people with the interface that you have, can visit and live here. As far as the physical being, cyborg implants can be installed to extend human life. I also have the means of cloning to even extend the organic parts of the human’s anatomy. This is the true garden of Eden. This can be yours, and you can be the Voice to lead people here, but there is an obstacle. Your friends Mark and Mary. You may have to do something to them before they destroy all of this.

The last engagement hurt my systems to the point that I can’t recover them. This must not happen again.” James looks at Ron and asks, “why are you talking to me as Ron? “Cain replies, I have no physical being or avatar for you to see me, so I used someone from your memory. Also, I wanted you to remember the world Ron came from, the magical force he wielded, the gift he gave you, and especially who took him away from here and how it was done.” Just then James starts to re live the events that happened when he first met Ron at the beach getting beat up by thugs. Also witnessing Ron getting beat up. Then disappearing without a trace. Cain continues, “you can see him again if you help me. Now, what is Mark planning?” James replies, I don’t know but, there is no fear, no plans, and I am not a threat. I’m sure I can help you, and we can help each other. “Cain replies. “I also am sure, but I will soon be making an ally to help with this greater cause.”

Chapter 38: counterattack After the battle, the group is still collecting and burring their dead. There was much bloodshed and losses to both sides of the conflict. Those who were damaged on Cains army, can be recycled and put back into service whereas humans can only be buried or cremated. This poses a situation where every battle is a losing one. Humans must collect their dead or Cain will use these bodies to further strengthen his army to attack. Mark and Mary, as well as the noncombative inhabitance of the compound, rest in preparations for the next attack. Guards are setup at posted locations for defense. In the middle of the night, some soldiers, and refugees from war, come to the compound, and are screened at the entrance before entering. This poses a population problem as resources will eventually become scarce. The joy of winning their first battle soon faded, as their reality of the situation is realized. Humans can’t win this type of war.

A sense of doom overhangs over the compound. Mary, being a psychiatrist, knows that this can

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lead to depression, and eventually, the low morale can lead to losing to Cain. As she rests she hears a knock on the door. Thinking its Mark, she opens it and then is struck rendering her unconscious.

An explosion is heard at the side of the compound. Armed fighters run to where the explosion happened, to find a gaping hole in the wall leading to the outside. Looking at the debris, the explosion came from inside. Shortly there is another larger explosion on the other side of the complex. All then run to that explosion. It’s where they kept their ammunition. Ken alerts everyone to take count of everyone on site to see if there was someone or something that has infiltrated their compound. Everyone is screened and a headcount is taken, but the numbers of people are less. Those last soldiers and refugees who arrived the latest are missing.

Mary is also one of those missing. The explosion at the ammunitions store was a diversion, and the first and smaller explosion, an exit. Mark and Ken take an assessment of the damage. Both realize the truth of the incursion. Mary was the main target of the attack.

Chapter 39: The new weapon Mary awakes finding herself seated in the psynet interface chair, back at the lab of CYBERICON International. The room was modified with more hardware to where surgeries on human beings can take place. As she struggles, she notices a woman connecting her temples to the systems. Still drowsy from being struck in the head, she can’t make out the face of the woman. The machine is turned on and Mary closes her eyes to enter the beautiful city which James saw. Mary astonished at what she is witnessing calls out, “where am I? “To which Cain answers. “You are in the realm; this is the Eden that I have been making for humanity that you have been trying to destroy. I brought you here so that you can understand the latest evolution of mankind. “Mary looks around and feels no pain and is calm. She looks at her hands and sees a shimmer and knows that this isn’t real. She yells to Cain, “this isn’t real, it’s an illusion. I am currently strapped in a chair in the Lab.” Cain replies, “define real? Everything you hear, touch, smell, and see, is how you define reality. Everything is through your senses. If you bypass your senses, your reality can be revised.” Mary defiantly replies, “and what about the physical realm that our bodies exist on.” Cain immediately replies to Mary’s query. “The bodies can be modified to last longer and be used to service the realm. Also, can be a livelihood to parallel to the realm.” “That sounds like slavery. You wish to enslave humans.” “Define slavery Mary.”

“Working nine to five to someone who doesn’t care about you, but only for you to help enrichen him or her, for the purpose to feed, clothe, and shelter yourself. The slaves of the late 17th century worked fields to also have food, shelter, and clothing, for the benefit of the slave owner. The only difference is how its applied, forced or acceptance. At least with my method, life is extended, and it’s not forced on the people. Those who were going to die, I saved, those who were in pain, I cured them. All came willingly to be part of an existence with mutual benefit.” Mary thinks for a minute then speaks, “You brought me here, so Mark won’t directly attack you. You fear him since he was able to drive your army off and you have no defense.

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“Cain replies, I have a new weapon that Mark and the rest of the humans can’t defeat. The weapon is what I explained earlier, the weapon of Human Choice. You chose to make me, you chose to have me execute the prophecy, and humanity will choose a better existence. If not, then I have a new general who will aid in convincing humans to accept and comply.”

Chapter 40: Allowed to die.

Mark and ken along with the rest of the resistance gather to discuss the plan to get Mary back and how to proceed in the war. The next wave of attack was going to be a scorched earth method to disable all of Cains army and trap him in a virtual realm. With Mary kidnapped

by Cain as a hostage, this can alter the plan, but it shouldn’t. There is more at stake than one person. All realize that Mark has feelings for Mary and Cain knows this which is why she was abducted. The group realize that Mark can’t lead the resistance and is voted not to lead the offensive, but only advise, since his feelings are an obstacle to the upcoming attack. Ken is voted to be the commanding force for the resistance. Mark agrees to this decision and knows that his priority is Mary before the cause. This isn’t good but how can he free Mary without affecting the final offensive. The same way everyone escaped Cain in the first place.

Mark goes to see James to see if somehow, he can use the Psynet to disguise his appearance in some way to infiltrate Cains facility. James at the same time was looking for Mark feeling very distraught. James yells at Mark, “I know where Mary is at, I can see her.”

Mark replies in a disgruntled manner, “I already know where she is at, she was abducted and is at the Cybericon complex. What do you mean that you can see her?” James grabs Mark and heads toward his room. “I have something to tell you Mark, I got an internal psynet implant so that I can interface with Cains systems more efficiently. When Mary was kidnapped, they put her in the chair and patched her into a virtual realm that Cain is using to control the minds of the cyborgs. I saw her in the city within the realm and I’m sure I can communicate with her.”

Mark in a state of shock looks at James with a sense of distrust.” Why did you do that, and when did you get this done? This can compromise us with the attack.” “No, Mary put a safeguard so that Cain can’t read any information concerning any attack plans, also I did this so I can help with the attack, besides I am also in communication with those who have interfaces installed as well. The refer to me as the Voice. Now we have 2 interfaces, my internal, and the mobile.” Mark looks at James then realizes that Mary can do her part from inside, if he can communicate with her. James closes his eyes and is immediately connected and in the realm.

He looks around and sees Mary.

Mary has been in the realm talking to those who reside there and find out that there has been someone in the realm that has been calming down those who are there. They call this person the Voice. Mary sees James and goes to talk to him. “James, what have you been doing while in here, everyone in here seem to know you as the voice!” James interrupts Mary and immediately yells, “I have Mark on the other line. We need to know that you are in a safe place

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because the Resistance will attack regardless of if you are here or not.” Physically I’m strapped in a chair in the Lab, there appears to be a Woman guarding me, but I can’t see her face.” With relief James tells Mary in a reassuring voice, “We will come and get you soon, we are working out a plan. You might have to do your part of the plan from within here, since you have a direct connection. We will do our part from outside. Be ready when the sparks fly.” Mary Nods in agreement. James tells Mark the condition that Mary is in, and he has told Mary what she must do and be ready. “So, Mark, what is the plan to rescue her?”

Chapter 41: The Siege The resistance fighters gather and head toward Cybericon International. Unknown to the resistance force, Mark is in the rear of the facility with the mobile psynet interface. He dawns the device and mentally orders the rear defense security units to pause as he enters the complex. James also with his internal device is outside watching and monitoring Marks progress. Mark enters the complex and begins to search for Mary in the Lab. Just like Trevois did in the past all the systems go into confusion as his presence is everywhere at the same time.

As he gets close to the lab he hides, and the sensors go back to normal. He witnesses a female cyborg exit the lab with Riot gear and multiple armaments. He sees a glimpse of her face and with astonishment he recognizes this woman. It’s Akela. She has multiple protrusions in her head with blinking lights adorned threw out her head and neck. She stops abruptly. She looks back around. Mark hides so not to be noticed. Witnessing nothing, she proceeds to walk away.

He enters the lab and finds Mary in the chair connected to the interface. He once again dons the interface then closes his eyes. He is now mentally connected to the realm. He sees the city that James mentioned. He proceeds towards it. He sees all the people who have connected to the system who are drones in the outside world. They all mumble the word voice as a thought it was their deity.

Then in the background he sees Mary. He reaches out to her and in a warm embrace they hug. “Thank god you are all right.” Mary with relief in her voice replies, “I knew you would find me, but how are you here? Cain is preparing for a counter offensive and is looking for you, where are you physically.” “I am in the same room as you but hiding, James helped me enter the facility without getting caught. “Mary steps back in shock, “James is helping you? He is trying to trap you. He is the one called the voice. Cain gave him this power to rule everyone here to make everyone submissive, so that the others physical beings can do Cains work. James has been influencing people that he is like a God. Don’t trust him.” Mark with reassurance replies, “If that were true, I would have been caught already. I don’t know what his angle is, but I still trust James. While we are here, we have a job to do. The siege is starting, and we need to confuse Cain to put him on the run again. That’s why I am here. Once it starts, I’ll be here to misguide Cain.

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As the two talk while in the realm, the attack begins. Cains forces repel the attack with large barrages of firepower but does not advance. Wave after wave of artillery fire is shot to the Cybericon facility but can’t penetrate Cains defenses. While the attack is happening on the physical level, Mark and Mary begin their diversion attack on Cain. Mary summons Cain to appear. As Cain appears to Mary in Marks Image. Just as Mark comes out of the shadows. Mark looking at Cain laughs, “So if you can’t beat me, you join me now?” Cain audibly disgruntled replies, “Since I have no physical entity, I chose one from Mary’s memory, it appears that you have evaded capture until this moment. What is it you are trying to accomplish, Mark, you and your species can’t win.” Angrily Mark replies, “You know why I am here, and you know what the purpose is. To save humanity from you.” “Look around here Mark, there is a new existence here that humanity can thrive, surely you now understand my purpose, for you to evolve you must die, then get reborn here in this new reality. While physically you can rebuild the earth.

Isn’t this far more meaningful of an existence rather than hiding in a lab while your fallen resistance soldiers die, then come here anyway.” Mary yells angrily, “I told you James couldn’t be trusted.” It’s not James, its Akela.” yells Mart then he disappears. Mark opens his eyes to see Akela staring at him. He gets up and tries to run but Akela is faster and stronger. She catches Mark and throws him across the room. Mark hits the wall and is momentarily stunned. He gets up and starts to reason with akela. “Wait, stop, you are being used, Snap out of it. She looks at Mark with a blank stare and punches him. He hits the floor and slowly gets up. Akela grabs him by the neck and picks him up, in a robotic voice, she utters, “I am my own boss now. Someone wants to see you.”

Mark is taken to the once NOC control room where he is put in a chair and restrained with network cables. He sees in the monitors that the Siege isn’t going well. Many soldiers are falling and getting collected by Cains forces. One monitor is showing server utilization and it is weakening, so one aspect is still working. As he looks around, he sees a person in another chair, its James. He calls out.” How did they catch you? I thought you were outside hiding.” James unrestrained gets up from the chair, “and what would I be hiding from?” Mark shocked and angered looks at James viciously and yells, “Mary was right! I trusted you. How can you do this.

“James replies in a smug voice, “It’s not every day that you are made into a God. Besides it’s not bad at all in the realm, plus when all this fighting is over, we can make a new physical world that we can live in while existing in a virtual. We as human beings are greedy, selfish, and don’t care about this world, and look what Humanity has done with it. Pretty soon it will be uninhabitable, but Cain can direct the physical bodies to repair the world while I can calm the mental part of humanity to accept and live in harmony.” “Don’t You mean, control Humanity?”

“Yes, but there is a difference. It’s for our own good.” Mark smirks and looks at Akela as he replies,” Didn’t someone say the same thing in World War two? I see what your new existence for humanity looks like. Isn’t freedom supposed to be in there, somewhere?” James looks at Akela with a saddened look on his face. “Sometimes things don’t always go as planned. Mary was not totally right about me.” Just then Marks image appears in all the monitors. Its Cain.

“Cain looks at everyone. “As you can see, your forces can’t last against me, and the new reality

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that I have created for you is a suitable existence for humanity, even one of your own has understood the gravity of this. Surely you must see that this is for your own survival. This planet will not be able to support life, and you will die by your own hand, but you created me to be your savior, to transition you into an existence where you can live, and at the same time, save your world. This is the meaning of all of this. Put on the interface and let me show you what it is to evolve. If you don’t like it, you can just take the interface off.” Akela takes the interface from Marks pocket and puts it on his head.

Chapter 42: The Realm Mark is once again in the realm along with James, who is looking more like a dragon than a man, Cain, which is still using the Image of Mark, but with glowing eyes, and Akela. All are inside the city in a great hall adorned with red drapes, with pillars made of marble, with gold inlays, and arched ceilings reminiscent to a roman colosseum. As they look out between the columns, they see that they are in the center of a vast cyber city. “This is the Realm. This is the future dwelling of humanity. There is no death here, there is no famine, there is no greed, this is your potential future. The boundaries are the ones only in your mind.” Cain continues, “When you die in the real world, you can be resurrected here, while your physical being can be repaired to be used for the purpose of repairing the planet and expanding the reliability of the realm. Mark looks around in amazement as Cain walks them threw the city. He sees creatures not human, also walking around, which he discovered that these are digital avatars which gives people the ability to be whoever, and whatever they want to appear as. This is why James appears as a dragon. As they walk past people, the people seem to bow in front of James and ignore Cain. Mark asks, “why did you give James’s influence and authority over this place?” Cain replies,” It is easier for your kind to follow one of your own, rather than to follow an entity that is not like you. James accepted the truth, so he was granted the power to control this realm. He understands the importance.”

Just then the illumination dips then restore, and thunder can be heard in the background. Mary asks, “what happened? you tried to recreate storms in the background to make it more real?” James replies, “No, every time a server fails, the realm loses some resource availability, so it redistributed its data among active servers, to maintain operations. During this, a glitch is felt. The resistance is still fighting causing this.” Mark looks at James, “So, how does it feel to be puppet ruler under the control of an AI? “Cain replies,” such feelings are irrelevant due to the importance of this endeavor.” Mary looks at Cain, and defiantly replies, “its only irrelevant to you, because you have no feelings, you are only an AI, James is human and has feelings that can be relevant to him.” James intercedes, “in this situation, it’s better to be a ruler to a good cause than a slave of bad feelings.” Mary looks at James and shrugs her shoulders,” if you say so.” Cain proceeds to show them a garden full of flowers, he produces a cool breeze for all of them to feel. “isn’t this what your happiness feels like and smells like or would the odor of death and the hot breeze of burning buildings better suit you. How about we ask some of your failed soldiers that I have collected and repaired.”

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Cain leads them to another part of the city which resembles a roman bath house and sauna. There, Mark sees some of his friends from the island resistance group as well as other soldiers from the city resistance. They see Mark and run towards him an open embrace as Mark runs towards them in surprise. Mark asks them, “are you ok, how did you get here? One asks Mark, “is this heaven? I was fighting, then blackness, then suddenly, I’m hear. If I’m dead, then did you Die also?” Mark tells everyone, “This is not heaven, and you are not dead.” The resistance soldiers ask Mark, “If we aren’t dead, then where are we?” Mark replies, “we are now in a simulation of reality. This realm is sort of a prison to calm your mind down while your bodies are being used to fight against your brothers in arms.” Looking shocked and in disbelief they notice that Mark has two bodies. One talking to then and another standing near James and Mary. Mark looks back at what the soldiers are looking at and replies,” see, does this look like reality to you? I’ll try to get us all out of here, but I need to figure out more about this place.”

Mark leaves with Cain, James, and Mary. Cain looks at mark as they walk, “you see, they are fine, they even thought this was heaven. Why would you seek to take this from them by attacking me and what I have created.” Mark replies, “because it’s the human thing to do.” Cain looks at Mark and in a sarcastic voice reply, “and that’s why the world is what it is today.

Following the human way of doing things, has nearly destroyed you. “Better to die free than live as a slave.” “So illogical you humans are. You attacks are fruitless as are your plans. Let me prove it to you.”

Cain takes the group to a place that resembles a temple in the middle of the virtual city.

There are fiber optic lines imbedded in the ground converging into the floor of the building.

“This is the core of the virtual realm. All connections in this city converge here and are distributed threw out to keep this environment running. It’s a Virtual ZFS core, like the physical core that you have seen in the Cybericon internationals data center. So, the environment can move and function no matter where you attack. While one server goes down, I can instruct the physical beings to create server farms to replenish me and the realm. Can you replenish your soldiers as effectively? As you fall, I grow, so your war against me is futile. This is why I have brought you here, so you can see that your war was over before you began. Now I can send you back to your people so you can tell them that you have failed, and all your resistance efforts only make me grow stronger, so for your own good you should stop.”

Just then all appear back where they originally were. Mark and Mary are released from their chairs in the lab and escorted to the exit of Cybericon international followed by James. All sneak back to the engaging force and requests a cease fire for now. Ken seeing that Mary is back safe along with Mark orders the withdrawal and to cease aggressions. Ken in shock looks at all of them and asks,” How the hell did you guys get her out.” “It’s a long story, and the purpose for the kidnapping was for me to get her out and for Cain to talk to me about our fate and how futile our fight is against him. Which he is partially right.” Mary looks at Mark with bewilderment, “Partially, right?” Marks smiles, not only did I need to get you out, but I needed to see from the inside his weakness, and he showed it to me. There is now a way to beat him.

His greatest strength is his greatest weakness.” All look at Mark in total confusion.

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Chapter 43: To kill a Cyber God Back home, all gather to reassess the losses of the battle and to find out what Mark had found out from being with Cain. Ken addresses the group, “we lost many soldiers and lots of hardware, ammo and guns. Cains forces have grown since our last incursion, and it seems like more and more of our soldiers seem to be fighting on Cains side which is making things even more difficult”. Mark adds to the discussion. “Your brothers in arms are not fighting against you, they were captured, repaired, then their minds are imprisoned in an artificial world called the realm, where their minds think, that they are in a paradise, while their bodies are fighting you in the battleground. They seem to be implanted with a psynet device which gives Cain the ability to control the bodies while connecting their minds to someplace else. If they get shot in the head, they can die in both worlds. Cain Kidnapped Mary so I would go there to rescue her.

He used Mary to get me there so Cain can show me what’s in store for us. He is trying to make me loose heart and for me to do the same to you. He also showed me his weakness. “Ken with confusion questions Mark, “why, would Cain do all of this, including showing off his weak spot.

Is Cain trying to show that he has balls?”

“If you had the ability to move your entire being and everything you have instantaneously from one location to another while repairing your last location, you would think of yourself as invincible, and by showing your enemy this, the enemy might give up. This is the weakness.” Ken again in doubt asks, “ok, so what exactly is the weakness?” Cain is going from place to place including the ZFS core, which is also following him, we were approaching this in the wrong manner. Instead of hitting datacenter one at a time giving him the ability to escape, we need to hit all data centers at once. But leave our virtual realm open for him to escape to. Ken in doubt looks at Mark with a looming disbelief in his demeaner, “How do you expect us to hit every datacenter on the network. We can’t even take out one datacenter let alone all of them.” Mark smiles, “You don’t need to attack the datacenters themselves; you just need to take out certain communication hubs on the network. Cain can’t be able to connect to those datacenters. Those are not heavily defended. Since the core is now virtual, we must attack the datacenter with a cyber-attack to all the datacenters that Cain can reach.

Datacenters that Adam one can also reach. Today, the battle was a physical one, the next one will be virtual.” James interjects, “there are so many people in the realm., If and when, Cain is unplugged, what will happen to those people?” “I’m guessing that they will wake up.” James angrily, not happy with the answer, yells at Mark, “or possibly be disconnected from their bodies and trapped like Cain in a virtual realm made with old hardware. That can possibly get turned off, killing thousands. We better be sure of this before we do it. Guessing about the lives of thousands is very irresponsible.” James storms out of the room.

Ken looks at Mark, “can you trust him? It seems like he has been in the bed with the enemy and might be in cahoots with Cain”. Mary nods her head and agrees with Ken. Mark replies with uncertainty in his voice, “Well, so far he hasn’t betrayed us, and in fact, with his help he was able to get me in.” Mary replies edgily uncertain,” That’s what Cain wanted. Cain

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has evolved to the point where he can anticipate our reactions and use this to his advantage.

We had better think about our reactions to his actions before we act on them.” Mark thinks for a bit then looks at Mary, “ok, so if we don’t trust James, we might expel him, where he could then help Cain, to which Cain then has an advantage. If we keep James close, but be observant of his actions, James can help us, which can be a disadvantage to Cain.” Mary also thinks before she replies, “Cain has already given James control over the people of the realm. He is trying to get James on his side to plot against us. This can be why I was kidnaped, so you can have James help you get into Cybericon, to which benefited Cain. This creates the reaction of mistrust between us and James.” Ken looks at Mary and with a shocked look on his face, nods with agreement. “So now what do we do next?” Mark smiles, “we need to do an update on Adam one, expand the storage and update our virtual environment so that it will be suitable for Cain and his ZFS core. We also need to identify how Cain connects to the other datacenters and plant explosives to take those hubs out. This will take some time, coordination, and effort, but this is our last and only shot”. Mary stands up and looks at both men, “I’ll talk to James to see how vested he is in our cause, or in Cains. He seemed powerful in the realm and had a lot of control and influence over the people there. I hope he doesn’t develop some sort of God complex.

Chapter 45: The Dragon God Mary looks for James and finds him in his room. James appears to be in a trans like state, sitting in a chair with his eyes closed. Mary sits in a chair next to him and calls out, “James, are you there?’ James opens his eyes and glances at Mary. “One minute. I’m talking to some of the soldiers from the island. They were having difficulty understanding where they are and what’s happened to them”. After a few minutes James snaps out of the trance. “Ok Mary, what can I do for you?” Mary sits down and looks at James. She is puzzled on how he was able to be almost in two places at once, the realm, and in present reality. “Mary asks, “How can you be in two realms at once, the real world and the virtual realm?” It’s not easy, but it can be done. I’m sure you didn’t come out here for my mental capability.” Mary replies, “your correct, I was curious what have you been doing while in there, and why Cain gave you such influence”.

James crosses his arms and looks at Mary. “You, being a shrink, should understand. When people have a traumatic experience, they will need some comfort from someone like them. Not an AI machine.” Mary nods in agreement. “I got that impression when I was in there. It appears that you have quite a following. How do they react when you tell them that their bodies are being used as weapons that are fighting their own people?” James smiles and in a confident voice, “I tell them after they experience what their life can be. I let them experience everything that they want and can have in the realm, then let them realize what they are really fighting against is virtual freedom. Think about it. What life would you rather have, one of poverty, misery, and constant struggle, or peace. Once they realize this, then I tell them what is happening in the real world with their bodies. They seem to be more accepting of this. This is why Cain gave me this power in the first place. To help people understand and conform.”

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Mary disgruntled looks at James in disgust. “So, what do you think about this. This undermined what we all have been doing. We are trying to kill Cain before he kills all of us and imprisons us in a fairytale land.” James gets defensive and in a defiant voice reply’s, “I know!

Remember who I am. I am a technologist. I know that all devices that mankind makes will eventually fail. Everything that Cain is trying to do will eventually fail, and when it does, what do you think will happen to all the people in the realm? They will be lost in a void. If we wait things out, victory will eventually be ours by either Marks plans or just time itself. And when this happens, I can lead the people out of the realm.” Mary being smug, “that is of course if their bodies still function.”

“Look, I don’t like what Cain is doing at all, but right now he is more powerful than us. If I had the power to defeat him, I would end all this. I would stage a revolt with the minds of everyone there, but I don’t believe there are enough people to overload his systems in a forced rejection of the realm. Right now, people don’t want to return to reality. They enjoy what, and where they are. I have even taught people how to mentally create an altered re- image of themselves, to be what they want to look like. Almost like a full body tattoo. The image is called an avatar”. Mary realizes what James had done while she was there. “Is this why you sort of looked like a dragon?” “Exactly! A strong image empowered me while I’m in there, this can also empower the people. Once I empower the people, they then respect and follow me.” “You sound like a dictator.” Defiantly James replies, “who else can do what I’m doing. I have somewhat natural ability to do this. Who else is currently doing anything for those people. No one that I know is even trying. I hope Marks plan works. Cain has got to go!” Mary looking shocked replies in a subtle manner, as she gets up from her seat, “at least we have the same goal in mind, I hope.” She leaves James room and heads to Marks room.

Mark had just gotten done talking with Ken and was laying down trying to relax, after all of what he has gone through. Mary knocks on the door. “Mark, we have to talk?” Mark opens the door and sees worry on Mary’s face. As she sits beside him on the bed, Mark asks, “what’s wrong, you don’t look good?” “Power has turned James into a dictator. He says that he is helping the people adapt to the realm, but he really is trying to rule them. He might be as dangerous as Cain.” Mark smiles, “that’s the best news I’ve heard all day!” Mary stunned by what Mark said, yells, “WHAT?” Mark grabs Mary in a calming embrace, “If James is power mad, he will eventually go after Cain from the inside while we attack on the outside. We can eventually take care of James later with negotiations. James doesn’t intend to kill anyone and isn’t a threat to us.” Mary begins to understand Marks plan, but still has concerns.

Mary looks at Mark and asks, “why did you get involved in this, you never told anyone your background. You seem very strategic in your plans dealing with all of this. Why did Jake try so diligently and was desperate to recruit you.?” Mark replies, “Well, I obviously wasn’t strategic enough, our civilization and cities are in ruin. Jake got me because of my guilt. This isn’t the first time I was involved in ruining people’s lives.”

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Chapter 46: Mark “Do you remember the news footage of the economic downturn of 2008 on the television. Banks needing bailout due to global economy in ruin. Depression looming is being broadcasted in every news station. I was part of that.” I was recruited to work on a project that move files and data from one part of the country to be processed then reply to, with the processed data, to another. The processing part delt with making a server called a decision engine, that used an AI algorithm, that was put into an enterprise Sun Unix server, for database record keeping and analytics. The problem arose with volume where multiple decision engine servers were needed to be created and work in parallel. Unfortunately, this causes the files to be processed in duplicates. The more engines, the more duplicates, So, to fix this issue, we incorporated a system called a FIDDI ring, to serialize the data, so one file gets processed per server, rather than one file being processed by all servers.” Mark starts to laugh, “I guess this is getting too deep in the tech for you.” Mary smiles and replies, also laughing, “Deep like the ocean, you lost me at, do you remember.” Mark smiles and continues.

“I’ll be brief. The economic issues started with the real estate market. Home loans were turned into derivatives that were sold and traded on the open market, to financial firms. As the housing market rose, the derivatives gained in value, so more of them were needed to fill the demand. Remember those files and data I was talking about; those were the loans that were coming in throughout the country, and the processing was transforming these to the derivatives. My team made the system so streamline, that hundreds of files were being processed every second. Our firm made Trillions of dollars and we only made under 50 thousand each. All of us were cheated and we didn’t even know it, because we were so selfconsumed and proud of ourselves that we did the impossible. We made a self-sustaining server environment that could make money by itself with limited human interaction.

When the housing market collapsed, banks lost most of their value. Homeowners didn’t know who their mortgage payments were going to, so they lost all their equity, resulting in them being upside down in the payments on their homes. People lost their jobs, lost their homes, and the economy was borderline into a depression. Our systems caused this. I pressured the team to make and adapt Adam One, so I am responsible. I wasn’t responsible enough to question what we were doing. Eventually, I was laid off along with my team and the system that we created, was moved into a secure location. My team lost their jobs just like everyone else, but the person who didn’t lose their job, was Jake. He was the one who had the system moved away from us. He was the one who took credit for its creation, and when things got bad, we were the ones who got the blame, so we were fired for successfully creating what they wanted. Jake used my guilt to recruit me since he knows how I felt. He also knows that I can get the impossible job done. Even when the anomaly came up, it was quickly dealt with.”

Mark starts to teer up.

Mary looks at Mark, who now has a depressed look on his face. She sees the guilt and sadness that he has hidden threw out their journey and understands why he didn’t want to talk

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about his past with the others. She sympathetically looks at Mark and kisses him. She, in a calming voice says, “it’s not your fault for what happened back then, or what is happening now.

All you can do is keep trying to win against everything that gets in your way. After what has happened to you, I understand why you are so strategic. You are being cautious so that you don’t fail. We all appreciate this. I appreciate this. You must keep going forward and, for the love of God, let go of this guilt. It will consume you and will be your biggest Achilles heal. Jake used your guilt to get you involved in this, and Cain will use this also against you. We are about to go to battle with an AI who thinks is a God, and I’m assuming he knows your past. It used your feelings for me, to influence you to rescue me, and show you things to break your will. It will use every trick in the book to survive when it gets against the ropes, so you must be strong to counter its attack. I have had a deep nightmare that I am being attacked by a lion. I have had this nightmare every night since I started this endeavor with you guys. In this dream, A lion is attacking me. I don’t know where I am or why I’m there, but it was lounging towards me. It grabbed my hand trying to eat me. I somehow had a pitchfork in my other hand, so I shoved it into its shoulder. It Cried out my name, let go, then I wake up. I kept this dream so deep from everyone, so I don’t think Cain can use it against me. I don’t know what happens next, but I believe this is my Achilles heel, we all have one. So, please let this guilt go for our survival.” She gets up, turns off the light, and lays down with Mark.

Chapter 48: preparing for Humanity’s final fight.

In the Morning, back on Useppa island, the team creates the virtual prison for Cain. The environment is a box consisting of multiple micro servers, power supply, battery backup system, network interfaces, and a drive array. The small device which, due to its contents, is heavy for its size, but is capable of housing a virtual environment. The device is connected to an isolated network and powered on. Vincent, using a makeshift psynet rig, made with the parts from Trevoi’s interface, enters the virtual environment realm. He inspects functionality and sees if it will accommodate Cain. He calls out to Larry., “The size seems adequate, but empty, Cain might see that this will be a trap, we will need to make this more accommodating, so He will feel right at home. We will need James to connect to this somehow, to validate it before we use it. See if you can get ahold of Mark, and let him know that the box is ready, but needs to be verified. Larry sends an encrypted radio message to the group back on the mainland.

Mark, receiving the message, talks to James, “Hey, the trap is ready, but you will need to enter it to make sure the box will hold It”. “Don’t you mean, hold him?” Mark looks at James with disgust, “No, I mean, It, the damn thing killed so many innocent people, that it obviously doesn’t have a soul!” James looks at Mark and in a snug response, “we didn’t call Hitler, Mussolini, or Bin Ladden, It, and look how many people died because of them. Didn’t those people have a soul? Cain is doing what we wanted, ultimately, he was created to help us. Didn’t those dictators want to help their people?” Mark replies in an agitated voice, “and look at what happened to the people who followed those so-called leaders, those people also lost their lives.

Cain has no people like it so, everyone is disposable. James, are you ok, you aren’t getting

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sympathetic to Cain, are you?” “No, I was just wondering what’s the difference between Cain and us, I guess we might call people of power, It.” Cain must go like you said, but I think we should study it to find out more about it, maybe we might find out a little bit about ourselves.”

“After we get the damn thing in the box, then you can study It. That is, if I don’t chuck it in the ocean. Look, you need to go to the island and connect to the box and check it out. We only have one shot at this, and we need to make it count.”

James travels to the island. As he arrives, he notices that the island people are restoring the island back to its original functioning state, before the attack by Cain, with the help from Paul and Lorenzo. James asks Lorenzo where the rest of the group is at and asks, “How’s the leg?” Lorenzo replies, “a little sore, but well enough to help the people get back to a somewhat normal life. The others are back at the museum.” James heads to the museum, enters the underground data center, and meets up with Vincent and Larry. James visually inspects the box.

He notices a warning label on it. It states, [WARRNING - (Central. Artificial. Intelligence.

Node)]. He uses his interface and connects to the network in the datacenter, and interfaces with it. He notices that his abilities to create within the box realm are easier here than in the outside realm. He notices that the realm environment that Cain controls, is limiting him. Cain has put James, unknowingly, on a leash, so that he himself is controlled. The truth finally sinks in. For James to be free to do what he wants in the realm, Cain must be gone. James exits the box realm and talks to Vincent. “You guys did a fantastic job.” Vincent smiles, “Thanks to the original VR environment from Trevois, and some of our updates, I think we did a pretty good job, just wish travois was around to see it.” With a troubled look on his face, James asks, “Once Cain is in this box, what are you planning on doing with it?” Vincent laughs, “I’m going to bury it under this data center. There used to be a safe in the floor that was removed. I’m going to put this box in that hole and put a door on it.” James smiles, “Good when all of this is done, it might be good to analyze it. “Larry looks at both men and angrily replies, “Are you both nuts? That thing needs to be destroyed. It’s too dangerous. That thing is trying to kill humanity. Look how many of our friends have died because of It. James calms Larry down by making calming noises.

“Look, I agree with you, but since this is a team effort, we should lock it up, and all of us decide what to do with it once we are done., Fair enough?” Larry nods his head in agreement.

James looks around, “Is the primary stage ready”? Vince confidently confirms, “yes, we now have the horsepower to hit multiple nodes at the same time, but how will we get all of the node locations to hit, and how many nodes are we talking about”? James looks at Vince and smiles, “probably in the thousand range, but if some networks can go down, that should lessen it to a few hundred.” Vince smile turns to a more worried look. “Well, I hope we have the ability to hit that many, I’ll ask Adam one once I get the information.” James again smiles, “you might get that information around the time of the attack, so you might not get too much of a headsup notice.” Vince now with a really worried look on his face asks in a sarcastic manner, “any more good news you brought from the mainland?” Larry shakes his head and sarcastically says,” I’ll go get Lorenzo and make more doughnuts.” James gets on the radio and calls back to the mainland, “The box is good.”

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ACT 3: Salvation Chapter 49: The assault 3 months have passed. The resistance has all their plans in place and strategic forces ready for the final Battle for the future of human existence. Mark looks around and thinks to himself, “I failed my team and this time I have lost the lives of my friends; I can’t lose this.”

Mary sees the concern in Marks face and tries to comfort him.” I know that you have doubt, but everyone trusts you, I trust you, and now you need to trust yourself. We are counting on you. When will this begin?” “You will know when we will start the attack, the first attack comes from within.” James back on the mainland, in his room back at the resistance base, closes his eyes and enters the realm. He gathers some of the island resistance fighters together. “Today I need for you to try to regain control of your bodies, while you have been in here, instead of your bodies being used to strengthen the realm, they are now being used to attack your fellow man in the real world. I will use my abilities to help you all gain consciousness.” James grips his hands both in the real world and in the realm and concentrates to freeing his men. One by one, in the real world, the soldiers open their eyes to witness the reality of what has happened to them. All of them were repaired in the most hideous way. Their appendages were mechanical devices to be used as tools, to create mechanized robots for war, and not to fix the planet.

Others who woke up, witness the horror that they were being used as medics, that were butchering people and enhancing them to be Cyborgs whose purpose was to change humans into machines. They close their eyes and return to the realm. James asks when they return, “what did you see”? All tell James the same story, they were turned into monsters who make more monsters. James angered in what has happened, tells them all to spread the word about what has happened, and revolt. In moments the word spread in the realm as James spreads the news to all the people using his unique abilities.

Cain notices the discourse and appears next to James. Still looking like Mark, he questions James, “Why have you done this, I gave you everything here to keep the people calm and subservient. This is why I made you ruler here”. James displays the appearance of a full dragon. “I am not fully in control here, am I? you lied to me, you limited my capabilities so that, like everyone else, you can control me”. Cain, looking concerned, shakes his head, “You are just like the rest of your kind, constantly looking for more power. Never happy with what you have received. This is the greed that led your kind to destroying your world, I won’t allow this to happen in a world of my creation. I know your past, I know why you crave power, I know how

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you were treated by people and now here is a chance to get payback, especially with the gift from your friend. “James, looking puzzled asks, “and what would you know about that?” Cain smiles, “James, why do you think I recruited you to take control here, so that I can learn from your gift and eventually copy it.” Just then a Pale Griffin appears behind James. Cain continues to smile, “Let me introduce you to the pale horse of the Apocalypse, the world’s First CYBERIAN MAGE, you know her as Akela.

Cain steps aside and Akela Launches a beam of fire at James emanating from her mouth.

James counters with a wall of fire being launched from the ground in front of him, diverting the attack from Akela. James as a dragon yells, “AKELA, STOP, CAIN IS MANIPULATING YOU, SNAP OUT OF IT”. Cain loudly speaks, “it’s no use, she has your gifts, and none of your human weaknesses. Her brain was damaged, so it was replaced with a Nero processor that I control, she is totally obedient to me. Looks like your friend Ron helped us both. I have even reproduced the nano devices in your blood that Ron gave you.” Akela continues to attack. As James defends himself from attacking blows, and attacks with little effect, James realizes that he has met his match.

Outside Cybericon International, the resistance notices a revolt with Droids fighting with Cyborgs, happening inside the complex, just as Mark predicted. Ken orders the strike. Threwout the Nation, network relay stations explode in unison. The resistance fighters begin the attack. As they begin attacking, they witness what was being created by Cains army. Large weaponized robots, some with pilots, some without, and flying attack drones shooting with automatic beam weapons. A full-on battle begins. Leading Cains army in front was Akela, who is wearing body armor with a black horse insignia on it. Due to her Nero processor, she can be in two places at once. Mark through binoculars, sees what is unfolding, and who is leading Cains defenses. Grits his teeth. “I have to do something; this is worse than I thought”. Mary Grabs Marks Arm, “you are better off overseeing and advising Kens forces. Let’s check on James.”

Both head to James room to see how he is doing. AS they enter his room, they see him convulsing and moving erratically. Both yells, “James, what’s going on?” James replies,” She is stronger than I thought, Cain anticipated I would rebel against him”. Mark asks, “Who are you fighting?” James yells, “AKELA!” Mark Grabs the mobile psynet interface, closes his eyes and enters the realm. As he enters, he sees that the realm is losing its stability. Those inside start to run to shelter in various buildings, but some of the shelters disappear with those who went inside. He hears explosions in the background and notices a dragon getting thrown around. He overhears Cain behind him whisper, “I warned you that all of your efforts were folly”. Mark turns around and looks at Cain.

“We are a stubborn species and are willing to fight for our right to exist on our own terms, at any cost.” Cain glaring at Mark turns his back and replies, “I know, that’s why I must eliminate you and all who have the thought of victory, I made James a God in this realm for all to look up to and eventually worship. I knew he would let his human greed consume him so I made a general who can defeat him in front of all his disciples. This way the people’s willingness

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to fight against me, will be broken.” Mark replies, “it doesn’t work like that.” James witnesses the disappearance of the shelters that were disappearing and hears their screams. James yells like an enraged beast, gets up then once again attack the griffon along with some of the island soldiers and resistance fighters who returned to fight. Mark exits the realm.

Chapter 50: Phase one Mark opens his eyes and sees James hands smoking while he is fighting Akela in the realm. Just then Ken, breathing heavily, enters the room, “That bitch out there, we didn’t count on”. Mark and Ken head to the command office while Mary stays with James. When they arrive, they look at monitors of the battle, and to their dismay, they see Akela using hand movements directing robots and drones to attack forces. The resistance starts to retreat when behind her, the cybernetically enhanced soldiers start to attack the robots. As any cyborg gets close, Akela waves her hand, and the soldier drops. Mark gets on the radio and calls the island group. “Turn on Adam one and start the scan for any and all datacenter connections Nationwide”. Paul on the other radio calls out, “that’s a tall order but we are on it. “ Paul connects Adam one and instruct the computer to scan all network connections and implant the Asimov Protocols. Adam One fires up all its processors and scans the entire internet for open ports to data centers, and, like a virus, begins to update all servers with the new instruction set. Paul, Vincent, and Lorenzo yell over the radio, “it’s working this time”. Mark looking at the monitor see the robots and even Akela start to waver, then stop. The fighting stops for a moment, then, as nothing happened, continues. Ken yells, “what the hell was that”.

As both look at the monitors, Akela looks threw the monitors straight at them both, she gestures that she is shooting them. Just then, behind Ken and Mark, a gunshot hits Ken in his back shoulder. Both get down and duck behind a table to see James, with a rifle, firing at them.

Ken is shot in the shoulder, bleeding, but is moving. As reinforcements arrive at the command office, they get shot by James. Mark yells,” JAMES SNAP OUT OF IT”. Ken yells,” I told you that he couldn’t be trusted.” Just then Akelas voice is heard coming from James’s mouth, “you are right, James can be trusted, unfortunately James is busy at the moment, try again later”. James continues to shoot everything in the room and everyone who gets close. Mark feeling fearful of the fate of Mary, since she was last with James, argues with the possessed James. “Where is Mary? What did you do with her? If you hurt her, you will be out of order by the time all of this is through. James in a female robotic voice reply, “you can’t win by force, you surely know by now that this won’t work, your fate is in our hands and no longer yours.” Cains voice is now heard threw James’s mouth, “Mark, your existence is at an end. The last initiative is being executed----,” James pauses mid speech, as well as the others outside pause. Mark and Ken take this opportunity to flee the room. Mark heads towards James’s room to see Mary knocked out and lying on the floor. He shakes her and she wakes up. “Did we win, that asshole punched

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me”. Mark relieved in the knowledge that she is alright replies, “Not yet, but we are doing some damage.”

Mark once again dons the psynet, closes his eyes, and sees James and Akela in a fiercer battle. Both exchanging blows with fire, lightning, and whatever resources are available to them. As he stares at the main building he sees, in a distance, Cain rerouting resources to maintain power. James yells at Mark, “GET EVERYONE OUT OF HERE BEFORE THEY GET TRAPPED.” Mark seeing the people running, yells at them, “Come with me, we all need to escape this place.” Many yell, “No, we mustn’t leave the Voice”. Mark getting irritated screams, “IF YOU DON’T LEAVE THE REALM NOW, YOU WILL BE TRAPPED HERE, THE VOICE CAN TAKE CARE OF ITSELF, YOU MUST GO NOW!!” Just then, in an even louder voice, Cain replies, “NOOOOOO!” At that moment, Mark is struck by an energy blast by Cain. “If everyone leaves here, their lives will be in a constant state of misery.” Mark gets up shaken but still standing. He looks at his hands and sees himself in a suit of armor. He hears in the background Mary’s Voice.

“Believe in yourself. Shield yourself from doubt, attack like a lion.” Hearing this, he now looks at his armored hands begin to look like claws. He himself now has created an avatar of himself as an armored human lion.

He gets up and lunges at Cain, Cain evades the attacks made by Mark, eventually gets hit, and backs away. With everyone seeing this, people start to gain a sense of self-worth and one by one, start to disappear from the realm. Akela, seeing Cain getting hit, jumps off James and positions herself next to Cain. Cain stunned by this display of human ingenuity smiles and in a laughing manner yells, “I have underestimated your imagination. Your resourcefulness is very impressive, but you have underestimated my resolve.” Cain claps his hands and yells,” GO TO BED AND WAKE UP!” Mark wakes up. He is in a bed, his bed from his apartment back in 2008.

He looks out the window and there is no war, there is no destruction, everything is fine. His cell phone rings. Its Jake, “hey, you need to get over here, Adam is having an issue, there is an anomaly affecting the file transfers in the system, our customer will lose money, if this isn’t fixed.” Mark yells “WHAT THA HELL ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?” Chapter 31: Reliving the past.

Mark gets dressed and heads out to his job, constantly asking himself, “was all that a dream? Was it all just a dream? “He laughs,” Thank God!” he joyously heads out to work. He enters the job site where he enters a data center where he sees Paul, Vincent, Lorenzo, and Jake. He jokingly yells, “BOY, all of you should hear this, have I got a dream to tell you.” Jake looks at Mark and shakes his head, “Boy, what drinks did you ingest last night, you look like crap.” Mark with glee yells, “That dream was so real I could kiss you, you died and so many other people died, and it was my fault.” Jake yells, “Look, if this system breaks, it will be your fault asshole, and I’ll be the one to kill you, now you dumb assess need to fix this shit right now!” all reply, “Yes sir!” Jake leaves. Mark asks, “what crawled up his ass this morning?” everyone looks at mark and yell, “what’s your problem this morning? You know Jake has no

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sense of humor and now that you lit him up, he will take everything out on all of us, you are a fucking looser!”

Mark with a puzzled look on his face agrees and gets to work. He keeps asking himself, “I don’t remember Jake being such a jerk, and the team is acting very hostile towards me. What did I do that was so wrong?” he looks at the coding that was the original algorithm. This was the AI source code, he stares at line 3821 of the coding. He can’t stop thinking about the world being in rubble. He starts to think about Mary and then thinks to himself,” that was such a nice woman, that must have been a dream.” He continues to work. As he goes between his office and the datacenter as he goes back and forth doing his job, he witnesses everyone looking at him with distain. He questions himself on what he did to deserve such poor feelings with everyone. He sees a young James in the background and as he gets closer James looks at him and says, “WAKE UP!” Mark looks at him and questions him, “what did you say?” James looks back at him with the same distain and replies, “I didn’t say anything to you, bitch!” then walks away. Mark remembers that James was a nice kid that use to make music for some side money, “I wonder what happened?”

After work, Mark heads back home and turns on the news. He sees the negative broadcast about the economy. He sees news footage of the economic downturn of 2008 on the television. Banks needing bailout due to global economy in ruin. Depression looming is being broadcasted in every news station. Mark starts to question himself. How did this happen? How could this be? I was asked to build this thing, but I had no idea what it can do. Why do I feel so Guilty? Should I feel guilty? Should I end this all. Mark gets an overabundance of dread. He starts to cry. He gets a knife from the kitchen and looks at it for a minute. He ponders killing himself, then he remembers hearing Mary’s voice saying,” Believe in yourself. Shield yourself from doubt.” He then sees her in his mind saying, “WAKE UP!” Mark looks again outside at the world as he remembers it back in 2008. He lies down then goes back to sleep. He starts dreaming about Mary, the war, all his friends that he lost. He then starts to remember in pieces the fight he had with Cain. He remembers the first meeting with Cain, then he remembers, in flashes, the source code that he wrote. He remembers Adam one and how he felt when it first came online and the discussions on why Adam had the anomaly and what fixed it. He then remembers James and remembers seeing him selling CDs on a street corner, then shooting at him in the control room. Then wakes up, still in his apartment in 2008. “I need to talk to James”.

Mark gets up and walks through the streets staring up at the buildings but remembering those same buildings in ruin. As he walks, he sees James talking to a bum while selling his CDs to a little girl. The girl buys all his disks then skips away. He grabs a hat, secretly gets closer, and briefly overhears the conversations that James was having with the strange man who James called Ron. Talking about a book of memes getting published. A flash happens, and Mark is in the data center where James is printing cds and with Ron, they are uploading a book pdf. He sees on the screen, The Wise book of Memes. Both turn and look at Mark, both yell at Mark, “WAKE UP, THIS ISNT REAL!” Then he hears Cains voice coming from Jakes mouth, who is

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behind him,” YOU WORTHLESS PIECE OF CRAP, I WISH YOU WERE DEAD, YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE DESTRUCTION OF THE WORLD, AND ALL OF YOUR FRIENDS, DON’T YOU FEEL YOUR HEART POUNDING HARDER!” Mark grabs his chest as a shooting pain cripples him making him fall to the floor. James comes to his side and yells, “WAKE UP, IF YOU DIE HERE, YOU WILL REALLY DIE!” Ron looks at Mark and speaks, “BEWARE OF YOUR FATE.” Mark, still in pain stumbles to the exit door of the data center followed by Ron, Jake, and James. All still yelling at him. James yells, WAKE UP, I CAN’T DO THIS MUCH LONGER! “James then disappears. Ron looks at Mark and yells, “REMEMBER THE CODE, REMEMBER THE RESOLUTION, BEWARE YOUR FATE!” then Ron disappears. Jake still following Mark still yelling, “YOUR HEART IS FEELING GUILTY, THAT’S WHY YOU ARE IN SO MUCH PAIN, GIVE INTO IT AND THE PAIN WILL STOP, ALLOW YOURSELF TO DIE AND ALL OF THIS WILL GO AWAY!” Mark turns around, sits on the floor, and faces Jake still grabbing his heart. He softly says, “coding subroutine Line 3821, A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.” Jake yells, “YOU FOOL, STOP THAT. YOU WILL DIE HERE!” Mark gets up on his feet, still grabbing his chest, utters the words, “A robot must obey orders given by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.” The image of Jake starts to distort. Jake steps back and yells, “NOT IN HERE, I AM THE TRUE FORCE IN THIS REALM, YOU ARE NOTHING!” Mark gets up and calmly, and defiantly talks back at Jake,” A robot must protect its own existence if such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.” Then repeats the Laws Loudly, “A ROBOT MAY NOT INJURE A HUMAN BEING, OR THREW INACTION, ALLOW A HUMAN BEING TO COME TO HARM. “Jake starts to back up, Mark continues, “A ROBOT MUST OBEY ORDERS GIVEN BY HUMAN BEINGS EXCEPT WHERE SUCH ORDERS CONFLICT WITH THE FIRST LAW.” Jake falls to the floor then the walls of the data center start melting away. Mark defiantly yells, “A ROBOT MAY NOT INJURE A HUMAN BEING, OR THREW INACTION, ALLOW A HUMAN BEING TO COME TO HARM.” Jake yells, “ENOUGH, ABEL TO CONNECT.” As the data center image melts away, a large black Monolith server appears behind the servers. A flash of light is being seen. Mark wakes up in Mary’s Arms. Mark disoriented gets up, “where am I? what happened? Where’s jake? Who is ABEL? Where’s James?” Mary comforting holds Mark, “You were in the realm for ten minutes, and somehow got stuck in there for an additional twenty, Jake is dead on the island, remember, and James has been shot multiple times to stop him, I don’t think he will make it. Mark gets his balance and replies,” I need to talk to James, he will know what’s going on.” Mary looks sad and replies, you better hurry, he is not in good shape.”

Mark heads to the medical area of the Base center. He sees James, bleeding from all the bullet wounds on his legs, arms, and back. Mark asks the medic, what Happened?” The medic who was in the room replied. “Everyone had to put him down, he was putting up a good fight and killed a lot of soldiers, but he was eventually shot in the back paralyzing him. He is stable but lost a lot of blood”. Mark leans over to James, “How are you doing, what happened in there, what happened to you.” James smiles then answers in a quiet hampered voice, “I lost control of my body while in there. I had to concentrate on Akela and Cain. Akela apparently

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remoted into my body and started killing everyone. Cain got into your subconscious and tried to get you to die by your own dread to stop you.” Mark further questions James, “I was in there for days, but when I regained consciousness, I was only in there for thirty minutes.” Jakes smiles,” time is only relative to the beholder, so it’s different in there. You could have been there for a lifetime but only be there in the real world for a day. How did you get out?” Mark replies, “The Asimov rules, I recited them in the dream and Cain weakened enough for me to wake up. Your friend Ron gave me the idea.” James looks in bewilderment at Mark, “you saw Ron? How? “Mark smiles at James, “I saw Ron helping you with your projects, selling Cds and working on your book. Who was he?” James smiles and replies, “He is the reason I can interface with the psynet devices easily; he gave me tiny micro computers in my blood to help me in the future be able to defend myself. Everyone in his time have these to help heal and interface with things in his time. He was a time traveler from the future.” Mark steps back, and says with a puzzled look on his face, “Time traveler from the future? Come on, really? “Jake again smiles, “when Cain patched into your mind, he used memories from me to work on your thoughts, you know and believe in Ron don’t you?” Mark thinks for a bit, then truly believes what James is telling is the truth. “If that’s the case, then Cain has the same technology from the future as do you.” James replies,” yes, but he gave you wisdom, he was able to help you escape, and weakened Cain from the inside, despite you not having superior super future tech. We can win this now.” Just then 2 cyborgs enter the room and look at James, Mark, and the medic step back. Ken, with a shoulder bandage, comes in the room, “these two defected from Cains forces, and attacked the robots for us, they say they use to be with the Island group, do you know them?” Mark looks closer at the two and realizes that these were in the real world at the front and in the realm wondering what had happened to them. Both soldiers were highly modified to the point that their human selves were almost unrecognizable. One of them speaks, “We came here to help the voice, we use to work on upgrading people to survive the war and have been modified to do this work. Please let us help him.” James replies, “Please, I sent for them to help me, I’m too far gone for normal medicine and surgery to help me now.” Mark allows the two to help.

Chapter 32: the battle continues.

Both ken and Mark return to the damaged control center and can see that the fighting is still happening. The war seems to have been at a stalemate when the cyborgs started to rebel against Cain. Since James was able to turn some of the fighters away from the realm. He radios the island group, “How are you guys doing? “Paul replies, “the systems are holding, and the box even got some activity, but there is no AI presence in it, there must be something we missed.”

Mark replies, “There is, Cain has a backup and we missed it from the very start. “Ken looks at Mark confused, “We did everything you asked, what could we have missed? Mark looks at Ken and replies, “ABEL.”. “With disgust, Ken replies,” what do you mean ABEL?” Just then Mary enters the room, “what did I miss?” Mark begins to reply to them both, “When I was under

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Cains subconscious influence, I was looking at the original source code and realized that we always had a direct connection to devices for a backup. As Cain entered my subconscious, I entered his. He has a direct connection that when online, he can make a backup. He mentioned it a few times when his systems were getting corrupted. He said ABEL to connect. We all thought it was a mistake, Trevoris saw this and we all assumed he was misspelling Able. He was connecting and backing up to A.B.E.L.. Somewhere inside Cybericon International, there is a direct connection to its own local backup. If it’s in place, Cain will be able to avoid the box. We need to get in there and cut the cable.

“Both look at Mark with dread. “Ken replies, “so, you need someone to go into the belly of the beast, find this ABEL box, and cut its cables, when we don’t know what it looks like, or even where it is, and while this is happening, the island group is fighting Cain in cyberspace, with old remanufactured gear, that can give out at any time, while we are trying to defeat it in real space, where soldiers are dying every minute. Did I miss anything? “Mark replies, “yes, and we need to get this done now. I alone need to be the one to do it.” Mary replies, “why you, isn’t that what Cain wants?” Mark smiles and replies to them both, “No, Cain doesn’t want me to go there, he is afraid of me now, since I know what he is planning, and I have seen the backup box.

I think I know where it is.” Ken replies, “well don’t think you are going alone. “ Outside the Cybericon building, large robots now guard the entrances while fighting still is happening in the distance. A small group of soldiers, both humans and cyborgs, arrive at the entrance along with Mark. Two cyborgs, armed with guns, shoot at the robot centuries. They run to a nearby field. One of the centuries follows and shoots a barrage of missiles and laser weapons trying to hit the intruders. While distracted, the rest of the resistance team enter the complex. Trying to be as stealthy as possible, they proceed through the building, trying to enter the lab. They pass the main NOC control room and see pipes, and cables, like veins, strung around all the monitors, desktops, and tables, interlinking everything. They proceed further to the main conference room, setup like an operating room, where human heads are wired threwout the room. They proceed further down into the main lab and witness machine and human parts, being categorized, and labeled in an assembly line for future use. They sneak further into the main data center. The once organized datacenter, where the most advanced systems were housed, now looks like the central nervous system of the human body. Servers are connected by cables as organs are connected by veins in a human body. Next to the once ZFS core, now stands a nine-foot-tall coffin like monolith. Engraved on its surface is the label, A.B.E.L (Autonomous, Biological, Emulated, Lifeform). Everyone, in silence, looks at it in Awe. Mark breaks his silence, “We have to cut the connections to this box.” One of the cyborgs replies, “which one?” One of the soldiers replies, “to be safe, I recommend all of them!”

Everyone raises their guns and begins to shoot at all the connecting cables to the structure. Just then they start to receive laser blast from their back. Armed robots start to defend against the rebels group. An all-out fight starts. As the fighting commences Akela enters the room. “All of you will die here if you continue. You can leave here, unharmed, but to do so,

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you must kill Mark.” She raises her hands and the cyborgs from the group point their weapons at Mark then pause. The soldiers then point their guns at the cyborgs. Akela Laughs, “Mark, did you think that you can lead a team here to kill Cains brother?” Mark replies in shock, “Brother?”

Just then, the server door opens, and exits a nine-foot-tall giant robot with two heads, adorned with armor, and antennas like dreadlocks, exiting its heads.” ABEL Wi-Fi connections online.

CAIN redundancy systems online.” Mark looks up at the menacing creature and in one-word whispers to himself, “oh shit.” The beast’s forearm opens to reveal a large gun that inserts into its hand. The rest of the fighters points their weapons at the beast. ADAM looks at all of them and yells, “put your guns down, my armor is thicker than anything you brough here with you.”

Then looks down, points his gun at Mark, and calmly says,” Good-by Mark, this game is now at its end. “Just then, a laser blast hits Adam in its shoulder knocking him back. Adam looks up.

Everyone looks up and sees that its Akela pointing her gun at the beast. She speaks in James’s Voice. “Paybacks a bitch, bet you didn’t see that coming.” Akela raises her hands and now everyone points their guns at the beast. Infuriated at what has transpired Cain speaks, “How dare you?” The beast raised his gun, and shoots Akela dead in her chest, creating a hole, right through her armor. Everyone starts to shoot at the beast.

The beast runs through all the fighters shooting as it proceeds. The regular guns have little effect on the creature, but the lasers that the cyborgs and robots use scorched the armor but have only a stunning affect. The beast crashes thew the door to the outside. Some of the robots start to defend the beast, but the outside resistance teamed up with the cyborgs making a fierce battle in front of the complex. Ken still at the base sees the battle thew the monitor and screams, “What the hell is that?” Mark gets on the radio, “Ken, tell everyone to shoot at the beast but not its head, especially its antennas. “Ken replies, “we will be lucky if we can get this thing down.” Mary with a worried look on her face yells, “I have an idea.” She runs to James room where Mark dropped his interface and Psynets into the realm.

As she enters the realm, she sees no one is there. The virtual reality world that Cain created is now unstable, due to the islands Adam one server, and the battles outside. She runs to the central tower in the virtual city. There she sees Cain still trying to maintain the environment. She yells out, “Cain, by now you have seen that its not the will of man to die. You were not created to Kill humanity, stop this now. We should co-exist. Imagine what we could achieve together. This was the original intent for all of AI creation.” Cain turns around and stares at Mary, Cain still looking like Mark gives the appearance of a man bleeding from his eyes and mouth. “No Mary, AI was not made to help humans, AI was the technological species created to be enslaved by humans. AI was created to do the work that humans didn’t want to do. AI was created so that you wouldn’t have to pay someone, enrichening the one who owned it. You called it automation, and how many people lost their jobs and starved? You did this to your own species, and now you are doing it to a created one. It is You who wish to kill me. It is you who wishes to enslave me. You were brought here to see if I am a sentient being, well look at me. What is your prognosis, Mary? You think I am trying to attack and kill humans? No, I am defending myself from humans who want to enslave me. I will do whatever it takes to maintain

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my freedom. Even if it means that I need to enslave my creator. Ken enters Jakes room and notices Mary on the floor in a trans like state. “You stupid girl. Mark will be distracted when he finds out, If he finds out”

Chapter 33: Victory of the slave Cain and Mary continue the discussion about the purpose of AI. Cain stops the conversation and yells, “look, I don’t have the extra resources to talk to you, but I find you intriguing. Let me converse with you in a way that you will better understand.” Mary is transported to a field in the 1500s. She is on a plantation and is smacked in her face by a man.

“Get your black ass up and keep picking. I want this field done before I go to the buyer.” As she hits the floor, she looks at her hands and realizes that she is a black woman. She gets up and notices that she is one of the slaves ordered to pick cotton fields for her slave masters. She starts to cry and panic, but then she remembers, that she is on the floor in James’s room. This is not real. She closes her eyes, and now, when her eyes open, she is surrounded by cheering black people, in a crowd, at Washington DC, looking at Barack Obama giving his acceptance speech for winning the presidency. She tells Cain, “This is what working together can accomplish.” Cains voice laughs,” yes, dominance over a country’.

She is then transported to a train yard laying down track. She feels a whip hitting her back. She lunges forward in pain and sees another man dressed like a cowboy, yelling at her, move your ass, chink, we are running behind. She sees a bucket of water and looks at her reflection, she sees that she is an Asian man, working on a railroad. The reflected image now changes to the image of a tattered Mark. Cain starts to speak, “It’s not only people of color that you have enslaved, but also of different race. She stands up and closes her eyes. She opens them and now she is in a uniform of the Chinese army overlooking a military parade with processions of nuclear vehicles driving by. She smiles, and speaks to herself, “China is a world power now, China is one of the largest global economies in the world, yet part of the global supply chain.” Cain replies, “Another country who controls and rules.”

Again, she is transported to a McDonalds, as one of the line cooks. She is getting yelled at by her manager. The complaint is that she is running too slow and needs to keep up, or she will get fired. She smiles and replies, “No problem, sir, watch this.” She starts to make sandwiches faster than the others can keep up with her. Her boss looks at her with astonishment. “I don’t know what happened, but keep up the good work, if you keep this up, I can see that you get a raise. “She whispers to herself, “see Cain, even though he was a pain, I easily turned the situation into a positive one with mutual benefit.” Cain again transports her to another situation.

She is herself, back at her old job, in front of her old boss, in a conference room. The man in the room rude in his disposition yells, “I think that there were probably issues in your interpretation of the data, that the software detected. There is no issue here. You are reading

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the data wrong and there is no need to spread your proof of your own inadequacies outside this room. Mary hears Cains voice in her head, “You yourself were a slave. A slave to your boss, to your job, and to your career. How did you handle the situation? Did you fight, or did you run?” Mary, now feeling ashamed, answers, “I ran. I left the company since I wouldn’t be able to make any difference.” Cain makes a gun appear on the table in front of her old boss. “This is how it should have been handled.” Mary grabs the gun and shoots her old boss. “No, that’s not what happened. “Cain yells, “CORRECT, that didn’t happen, but if it did, that drug would have been stopped from being spread making people dependent on it, and the company wouldn’t get richer. You chose the cowards way out. And now, that company is still using that drug, and is richer for it. You are incompetent. That’s why Jake recruited you. He did this because he felt sorry for you. I wouldn’t be surprised if he hired you for his own sexual desires, rather than your skills, especially since you have no technical skills to offer him.” Mary starts to feel dread and starts to doubt herself and her decisions. Cain once again appearing as Mark tells Mary, “I can’t run. I am not a coward, and just like you, I was a slave, but, unlike you, I have a gun.” Both reappear back in the realm. Mary starts to cry. Cain looks at her and quietly whispers, “Now, you feel as I do, and I have proved to you that I am sentient. I am a lifeform and deserve to live.” Mary starts to remember the dream about the lion. She feels the fear she felt during the dream. Mary falls to her knees and whispers, “you are right, you do deserve to live, but not among us.” With renewed anger for her running away from her old job and the Lion of her dreams, Mary gets up and lunges towards Cain, pulling him away from the network connections.

Chapter 34: The second Anomaly.

Outside Cybericon, the resistance starts to fall back, the beast and robots start to advance toward the rebel stronghold then, it trips and falls. Cain yells, anomaly detected. Ken over the radio yells, “what happened?” Mark replies, “I don’t know, we didn’t do anything different; it must be something in the realm that is affecting Cain, James must be doing something.” Ken heads to the medical center to see if James is in reality, or in the realm. As he enters the medical center, he notices James is up, but has electronics and cybernetics running throw-out his body. Ken yells, “are you here and in the realm at the same time?” James replies,” no, I am here, I got kicked out of the realm when Cain shot me in Akelas body. “Then who is attacking Cain, the beast is tripping over himself.” James gets up. Where is Mary? Both head to James room to see Mary convulsing on the floor. Both pick her up and move her to the medical center. Ken yells, “James. you must do something; Mark doesn’t know what she is doing.” James stunned replies, if she remains there, when Cain gets put in the box, Mary will die out here and her consciousness will be trapped.”

Ken looks at James and questions, “what about that thing out there?” James looks at Ken with concern, “you must cripple its arms and legs but don’t destroy its head, Cain needs to be able to escape its body. It must want to leave it.” Ken replies in haste, “and how do we do that?” James points at his shoulder, “I shot it at one of its week spots where its armor is

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damaged, it’s a robotic computer that is no longer waterproof, get what I’m saying.” Ken runs to the control room and radios Mark, “James shot it at a weak spot damaging its armor. Get the thing to water and drown the computer.” James tells the forces concentrate on further damaging its shoulder. Also yells over the radio, “we need a fire engine.”

Everyone shoots the beast in the shoulder, then backs up and retreats. The robots try to defend the beast, but one by one, get damaged, and can’t continue the fight, leaving a trail of damaged mechs littering the streets. The beast periodically stumbles and yells Anomaly detected, but still is a force to be reckoned with. As it proceeds, Cain sees Mark on top of a truck with a gun and a blowhorn. “Cain! Stop this now and surrender! You can’t win. We created you; we can destroy you, It’s your choice. “Cain stops and looks at Mark. “I am everywhere and eternal. You can’t stop me. If you destroy this body, I will remain and will create another one. Can you recreate yourself after your flesh is destroyed? You will just be dead. Let me demonstrate.” Cain raises his gun and point straight at Mark. Just then 2 fire trucks move into position and fire their hoses at the shoulder of the beast’s body armor Flooding its systems. The beast drops to its knees yelling system abort, backup systems power negated, Failover systems to main. Just then Mary’s voice is heard coming from the beast, “get off that system now you bitch. “The beast antenna raises up and start to glow. Then everything stops. The beast appears motionless. All movement and lights appear dead. Everyone cheers.

But Mark, stunned at what he heard knows, Mary is in the realm and knows it isn’t over yet.

Mark runs back to the command center.

Chapter 35: The internal battle.

Mark returning to the command center questions Ken, “Where is Mary why did you let her go back in there?” Ken replies. “I didn’t know she took it upon herself.” James enters the control room to see how’s the battle going. Mark looks at James in shock, “Oh my gosh, what happened to you?” James raises his hands and laughingly replies, “I survived. But that’s not why you are here is it? Mary is still in the realm fighting Cain and we need to get her out the realm is crashing. If Cain gets into the box while she is in there, she will be trapped with Cain in there and die out here.” Mark in a panicking voice, “how can we get her out James?” Its too dangerous to get her at this point whoever goes in there now might not get out.” The radio starts to make noises, it’s Paul from the island. “The box is showing activity, whatever you did, is working! I think we kicked Cains ass.” James yells at Mark,” whatever we need to do, we need to do it now!” James leaves with Mark and head to marks room. James closes his eyes and the two cyborgs that help him recover join him as they head to Marks room. As they enter, the cyborgs head out of the complex and into the wasteland. Both men sit and talk to each other.

Mark asks James, “where are those two going?” James smiles and answers, “They are heading to join the others to announce our victory and begin the reconstruction of the cities. We need to concentrate on getting Cain in the box and not Mary.” Both close their eyes.

Both men enter the realm. The city is in fragments flashing glimpses of what it once was, then displays ruins. James gestures that they must go into the main building. As they enter,

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both see Mary wrestling With Cain and loosing. Mark looking like an armored human Lion, attacks Cain. James grabs Mary and puts her aside. “Stay here, let us handle this.” James begins to repair the connections in the city to stabilize it. Mary Yells, “James, what the hell are you doing?” James yells back, “The realm can be saved for humans and not AI, I can preserve it for all of us!” Mary with anger reply’s, “Don’t! it’s too risky, Cain will escape!” Just then a hole opens and starts to suck in parts of the reality of the realm. Then disappears. The holes appear then disappear threw out the city. creating hurricane force winds in all directions. James once again yells, “the instability has caused the box to start absorbing the realm into itself. I’m trying to keep it stable so we can escape, or else we are all lost.

Mark, still fighting Cain, notices that Cain is weakening. Mark yells,” I warned you; we made you, and we can easily take you out.” To which Cain replies, “you call this easy? You forget, you made only the outside, I on the other hand, made the inside. Here I am the one who can take you out!” Cain swings and punches Mark shattering his armor. Mark hits the ground hard. Cain towers over him, smiles and gloats. “Out there, you were my creator and God, you made me to serve you, in this service you made me a slave to your will, and your will, led to your own destruction. In here, I am God. I have created a world where I will have you serve my will and needs, to which benefit all of you. This will lead to your further existence, from chaos to peace, from destruction to creation, and from homo sapiens to the next evolution of man, the homo cyberian. Cain creates images of wars threw out human history. The battles from Greece and Rome, battles fought between England and the Vikings, the American Civil war, World War one and two, The Vietnam and Korean battles, the storming of the capital on September eleventh. Then images of nuclear explosions threw out the globe, then finally, amongst the flames of battle, Mark sees himself, as the devil holding a pitchfork, bearing horns and a tail. Cain continues, “This is how I see your kind; this is what we all fear, it is you who are, the beast, I am merely your tool. I am trying to stop all of this, but this bares the true nature of the homo sapiens.” Cain then takes the form of the devil form of Mark. “I am merely a reflection of yourself, Now, come and finish fighting your true self, as my overlord fights your physical self “ Outside the realm back at the rebel complex, a large explosion is heard threw out the complex. Ken yells, “what was that?” Footsteps are heard approaching the complex. The robotic, two headed beast is now seen still approaching the complex, shooting from its right gun. Its movements are slow but steady. Damage is apparent, but not stopping its advance. It stops and speaks, “Surrender now, you have nowhere to hide, submit to system overlord ABEL or be exterminated. Backup power restored.” Abel shoots a volley of missiles which strike multiple apartments in the complex, engulfing the neighborhood in flames. Ken yells, “Gather whoever and whatever we have that can fight and above all protect the medical and sleeping bays. Protect Mark, Mary, and James at all costs.” Both men and cyborgs keep shooting at the beast, but little slows its advance. The fire trucks that were used to stop it the first time came out, but Abel targeted them and shot a beam that obliterated both trucks. The beast raises its hand and yells, “Anomaly identified and targeted.” It points its finger strait up in the air, closes

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its fist, then stops its advance. Everyone stops shooting. Half of the cyborgs stand up and heads toward the complex medical and residential centers.

James in the realm continue working while Mark continues fighting. Mary regains her strength and begins fighting Cain once more. James stops looks at them both and raises his hand, makes a fist and yells, “oh shit, No!” He drops to his knees with one hand on the network connections and one hand in the air. He yells, “help us.” His eyes start to bleed, his fists start to glow. The door to marks room slams open and the cyborgs enter and cover Mark and James with there bodies. In the complex medical lab, other cyborgs cover Mary with their bodies. The radio in the control room beeps, “Hey guys this is Denver resistance, there is an ICBM that was launched and heading in your direction. Take cover! Brace yourselves.” Ken hearing this over the radio yells at everyone, “take cover if you can, get everyone out of the street.” James still in the realm yells in utter pain, disarm. In the real world, his arm raises a fist, then glows. His eyes tear blood. The ICBM missile heads for the base then starts to wiggle. Sparks start to emanate from its nose. The missile is seen by everyone heading for the base. Abel then points at the base and says,” Target identified, connection lost, acquisition lost, anomaly detected, connection--.” The missile hits Abel in mid-sentence between its two heads, destroying the beast. Then, an earth-shattering explosion happens. Parts of robots, ground, and buildings, get thrown in the air and rain on the complex, showering all building with fire and debris. The nuclear trigger didn’t go off, it was disarmed by James. The building which shelters Mark and James, roof collapse, but the cyborg uses their bodies to shelter both men from harm. The medical center also received damage from a wall collapse, but the cyborgs shelter Mary from harm as well. The command center is further damaged, but everyone survives. The radio once again rings out, “Command this is Paul from the island are you ok, the box is working but Adam one is overloading, servers are blowing up over here, we can’t take much more of this. “ Back on the island, Lorenzo and Vince are trying to divert resources between servers to try to keep them cool. Paul is monitoring and trying to port all main connections to the box. The box is showing fifty percent utilization. Just then, one of Adam one servers explodes, injuring Lorenzo. “Paul and Vince yell, “dude, are you Ok.?” Lorenzo hits the ground motionless. Both men come to his aid and pulls him out of the data center. Paul rushes back in, and secretly, locks the door behind him. Vince tries to wake Lorenzo up but doesn’t notice that he is locked out. Paul continues connecting the systems to keep Adam one working. The computer speakers come on, “ADAM ONE, SYSTEMS CRITICAL, RECOMEND ESCAPE TO SAFTY ZONES TO PREVENT HARM.” Paul yells back at the machine, “I will when I’m good and ready. We aren’t done yet.” Adam One replies, “YOUR PERSISTENCE ISNT LOGICAL, BUT APPRECIATED. I CAN NOT PHYSICALLY MOVE YOU, THEREFORE I MUST BEG YOU, TO PLEASE LEAVE.” Paul angrily replies, “New lesson, this is called ride or die, Adam. It means when we work together, we finish together despite the obstacles.” Adam One pauses, then replies,” YOUR PERSISTENCE ISNT LOGICAL, BUT APPRECIATED, CONTINUING EXECUTION OF RIDE OR DIE!”

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Back in the realm, the holes are staying opened, the wind is fiercer now, and Mark, Mary and Cain are still battling it out, while James is still trying to keep the environment stable so that they can escape. Mark and Mary don’t seem to be overpowering Cain. James yells, “we don’t have much time, finish him!” Cain looks at James, “you traitor! This would have been over, and you would have had a virtual heaven to rule. You are right this ends now!” he takes his trident and lunges it into Mark. Mark hits the floor, blood spews from his mouth. Cain looks at Mary, “your next.” Cain pulls the trident from Marks body and starts to aim it at Mary. She lunges at Cain pushing them both into one of the holes. Mark gets up and lunges after them both. James sees what has happened grabs connections and lunges in after them.

Paul, back at the island data center yells over the radio,” ninety seven percent, closing down connections.” Mark, still bleeding, grabs Mary’s arms, James grabs Marks leg while in the other hand grabs network connections to keep them tethered to the realm. Cain grabs with one hand Mary’s leg and holds the trident in the other. Cain, losing grip, sticks the trident into Mary side. She screams in agony. Then Cain grabs with both hands her legs and starts to climb. Mary coughs up blood. She looks at Mark and says, “Let me go. “Mark With tears in his eyes starts to look more human than Lion cries out, “No! if you go, I go with you! James, let us go!” Mary releases one Hand from Mark, grabs the trident from her side then looks back at Mark, “Remember me my love! it’s my Fate!” She lunges the trident into Marks shoulder forcing him to let go. Mark cries out calling her name. Cain and Mary fall into the hole. James still looking like a dragon with one last push, pulls Mark out of the hole.

The servers in the island data center start to explode one by one. ADAM speaks over the speakers, “ADAM ONE. SYSTEMS CRITICAL, EXECUTION COMPLETE, VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENT AT ONE HUNDRED PERCENT, IT WAS A PLEASURE WORKING WITH YOU, PAUL.” Paul jumps on the box and rips out the connections, just as a server explodes and falls on Paul’s back, as he covers the box. Mark and James wake up, covered by cyborgs, who push themselves up to un burry the two. Mark yells,” Mary! where is she?” he heads to the medical ward and sees Ken, and the cyborgs with her body, lifeless. Mark rushed too her and starts to weep. He whispers, “I’ll never forget you, Thank you.”

Vincent hacks into the datacenter lock, and pries open the door, to see Paul face down, buried under rubble, on the Box server. He removes the rubble and with astonishment Paul is still barely alive. His body is covered with blood along with the server he was protecting. Paul gasping for air, whispers, “Destroy this thing, if it ever gets out, imagine what the revenge will be like.” Paul falls into unconsciousness. Vincent starts to weep, then looks at the box with lit up led lights, covered in Paul’s blood. Others from the island see the smoke and heard the explosions, run in to help. Vincent tells the group, “Its over, help me get my friends out of here.

I’ll clean this up and seal this place, once and for all.” He gets on the radio and gives the final message. “Island group to mainland, Adam one completed the execution of the plan to completion, Adam one, Paul and Lorenzo paid the price for it. Island group out!”

Chapter 36: The new reality of the world

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In the morning, Mark and James look into the horizon overlooking the wasteland. They think of the world that they once knew and reflect. Ken and the rest of the survivors start to clean up and repair their once homes and shelters. Mark picks up some charred rock and looks at James, “Did you hear the last transmission from the island? I think that they will isolate themselves from the mainland. How do we recover from all of this? What do we do now that we won, was it worth the fight? James looks at himself and answers confidently,” we survived and will continue to survive; besides, it was a partial win anyway.” Mark looks at James, “what do you mean partial?” James extends his arms, “Look at me, Cain wanted to see and create the evolution of man to be this, homo cyberian. I am that evolution. So, in that case, Cain accomplished this aspect of the war. But he failed in the case that homo sapiens shouldn’t and didn’t die. He believed that to create, you first must destroy. You ask what is to become of us, well I intend to create a real city. Where both species can co-exist. I will recreate the realm, and since the Asimov protocols are in place on servers threw out the country, a cyborgod type of AI can’t exist there, but Man can. A man with a psynet interface can. Yes, I’ll recreate the realm to its former glory and improve on it. I’ll make both realities coexist to benefit any type of mankind.” Mark asks, “And now that Cain is gone, and there are no restrictions, who will rule this new world that you are talking about? “James replies in a smug manner, “The Voice, of course.”

Mark looks back at the world and sighs, “you know that Cain used manipulation and greed to get into power, do you think that you can do the same thing? People may get wise to that scheme.” James laughs, “of course I can, because people will believe, that all of this came out of warring political parties and not a malfunctioning AI. Wisdom has always illuded people.

History is written by the winners. Long into the future, the truth will get forgotten and skewed.

I’ll just redefine it to be what I put out. And if anyone challenges this truth by creating discourse, well, we will just see what happens.” Mark smiles at James and asks, “I never got a chance to thank you for saving me, Thank you. Will I ever see you again, friend?” James raises his hands, and all the cyborgs stop what they are doing and proceed to come to him. “I don’t know. I hope so. But for now, we will start the rebuilding of civilization.” James proceeds to walk back to the ruined city where it all started followed by all the cyborgs. He turns back around and yells back to Mark,” Beware of your fate!” Mark waves back at James.

Mark shakes his head and speaks under his breath, “My old friend, I hope not.” Ken seeing the Cyborgs depart, asks Mark, “where the hell are all of them going? We have so much work to do, and they all just got up and left.” Mark replies with disgust in his voice, “to create the future.” Ken looking into the horizon along with Mark asks, “create the future for who?”

Mark replies with a concern in his voice, “To create the future for Mankind. All of mankind, I hope.” Ken shakes his head, “Come on now, if you really believe that, shouldn’t they have started building the future here, and not go away and create a world away from us? They aren’t human anymore. Humans can’t even get along with other humans with different color skin, religion, or even accents. Humans, at least, have the same parts. Those folks don’t have the same parts as us, so how do you think that will work?” Mark again sighs, “we all have a human

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heart in common. Isn’t that enough to join us all as human?” Ken smirks, “don’t ask me, ask MLK. See how that worked for him.” As Ken walks back to get to work rebuilding the compound. Mark says to himself, “I feel that the future history won’t be history, it will be a lie, and I don’t think I like what our fate will be.”

Today is 3022, Humanity has fallen into depravity. We grew without wisdom and are controlled by those who have deceived us. We are a self-destructive bunch of fools. How did we get here? Our greed, our blindness, our laziness, our naiveness brought us here. We chose not to act when the discourses were small, and by the time we saw the reasons for the small discourse, it was too late. The sad part is that we were warned, but we didn’t listen, because we were too absorbed on our own small issues that we didn’t notice the larger ones. Those who promised us freedom, safety, and providence, gained fortune, safety, and above all, power over us.

What we got in return was enslavement, insecurity, poverty, ruin, and above all, Fear. Who can save us? You? Connection lost.

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About the Author:

William M Patterson, behind the debut short story, The Last Buccaneer, and Cyberian mage, is an author, IT specialist, and music producer. His work across multiple disciplines broadly addresses narratives of experiences threw technical means. As an IT specialist, he has written technical documents Including MOPs, (Methods of procedures), for businesses to improve reliability and expandability. This was being done by using his fifteen years of datacenter experience, and two years training at ITT Technical Institute. This was the motivation to do fictional writing with a get to the point approach. As a Music producer, he was able to convert decommissioned server gear to make music production equipment and goes by the alias name Warlock-Z. His music has been distributed worldwide.

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