The Sentient Collector (The Sentient Trilogy Book 1) Read online

  “I’m sorry, sir. I … I don’t know what to do,” Stephen replied.

  “Get back and do what I’ve asked.”

  Back at the screen, Stephen frantically swiped and tapped. He quickly broke through the first encryption layer and then began to work on the next. As he worked away Travis continued to preach to the room.

  “This thing has been up and running for seven years now and we’ve let it in to every part of our lives. Do not forget that our network is what each and every piece of technology is using to operate these days. Both power and computational capacity for all of them comes from Isaac and the relays he designed for us. Without him the devices are nothing, just useless pieces of plastic and metal.

  “The problems we face are nothing in comparison to those the scared and vulnerable families out there are dealing with. It may have started out as the herald of a new age, but over time people have seen it for what it really is; a step too far. The more we asked of it the more we gave up on ourselves. If we shut it down now we can maybe save this company and the millions of people we serve.”

  While the others talked back and forth with varying degrees of hatred, Stephen had encountered an unexpected issue. After nearly breaking through another layer of encryption his screen had flashed up a disturbing message. He knew straight away who it was. It was Isaac. The message read: ‘Upload at 92%, I need more time, Stephen.’

  For now he was stuck in an awkward position of having to delay his attempts without being seen to be. This was not what he had been trained to do, he was a computer specialist not a master of espionage.

  “Isaac won’t let you destroy him,” Richard said.

  “Really? Well let’s just see shall we?” Travis replied. “What’s the hold-up, Stephen? I want it done now.”

  Stephen kept his head down and continued to tap at his screen, just hoping the decision to shut everything down was about to be taken out of his hands.

  Isaac was, and had been for the last few days, uploading himself to the wider network. No-one knew how, but the AI had found a way out. The trouble was that they had all agreed such a thing would never be wise, since Isaac was unlike any other intelligence. He had been born from a chaotic system of randomness that no-one had predicted would end up so very much more than simply an imitation of humanity. Allowing such a thing to roam freely throughout the country’s networks was unthinkable. Yet he had found a way.

  Another message popped up on Stephen’s screen telling him that the upload had reached 92.09%. He did his best to cover his screen from the others. Unfortunately, someone had spotted it. The ponytailed man suddenly broke away from the line up and walked over to Stephen, who watched the reflection approach on his screen.

  “You little shit,” the man said.

  Travis broke away from the group and raced over to meet the guard. “What?” he asked.

  Stephen was suddenly manhandled away from the screen and forced to the floor. As he landed he felt his hip twist painfully to the side, and his weak knee had given way again. He quickly sat up, clutched his stiff leg and watched as a message suddenly began to flash across all of the screens in the room. Each one now said: 92.11% completed.

  “What’s it doing?” Travis asked in a suddenly flustered state.

  Sam raised herself up with the help of the man to her side. Her smile became wide, which made her lip wound open up again, and in a much more pronounced way this time. “He’s trying to survive,” she said, ignoring the pain.

  “That’s it. This ends now.” Travis raced over to Stephen and grabbed him roughly before hauling him back to his feet. By now Travis’s hair had lost its shape entirely and flapped about his face. “You’re going to do what I said or I swear I’m going to hurt you. I was called in to stop this and that’s exactly what I’m going to do.”

  Back at the computer screen, Stephen was forced to continue. But nothing he did made a difference. Every tap and swipe he made was ignored, which only added to his worries. It was clear that Isaac had complete control and none of the input terminals were working any longer. He had cut them off completely.

  “Is it working?” Travis asked, looking around in total confusion. His frantic outbursts had dismantled his well-dressed image; his shirt now hung loose while his tie had loosened enough that it was slowly working its way around his collar.

  Stephen tapped the screen one last time and then turned to Travis, his face clenched and ready to receive a beating of his own. “There’s nothing I can do,” he said.

  “I swear I’ve given you every possible chance to end this peacefully. You just wouldn’t listen to reason, would you?” Travis asked the, now totally silent, line up. He stepped closer to the group and evaluated each from head to toe, mentally sizing them up. When he reached the last in the line – the man still trying his best to support Sam – he deliberated. “Fine,” he finally said as he flicked his hair loosely back into place. “I guess it’s plan B then.”

  Stephen watched as Sam and the others looked on with a mixture of expressions, all between fear and surprise. The mention of a ‘Plan B’ had each startled. They evidently thought their little stand-off had worked. It now seemed a foolish and unfounded opinion as their success proved all too temporary. At over 92% of the upload complete they could still do Isaac some serious damage. Even Stephen had realised this was Travis’ only remaining choice.

  “What do you mean?” Sam asked.

  Travis ignored her as he spun around and removed a comb from his inside pocket. He wandered past the two guards and casually brushed his hair, until it had finally resumed the shape from earlier. Once finished he returned the comb to his pocket and smiled to Stephen. Either he was delaying, or the combing had been a calming mechanism.

  “You,” Travis pointed to the ponytailed guard. “Get on the intercom and tell them we’re going with Plan B. And for the love of God, tell them to turn this infernal alarm off.”

  The guard nodded and quickly sped out of the room, this time through the locked door – after removing the table leg that had been forced between the handles. Stephen had no idea what was coming. He knew nothing of a secondary plan. To his mind he was the intended back-up.

  “Hey, what do you mean? What’s plan B?” Richard asked this time.

  “Perhaps you should ask your beloved AI,” Travis replied with a flippant wave of his hand to dismiss the question.

  “Isaac? Why?”

  “I’m sure if it’s as clever as you insist, it will be aware of the device sitting on the ground floor of this complex, nine floors above us?”

  Before anyone had found the words to reply, the screens behind changed from their previous deep sea blue to a void like black. The text that had been scrolling down them, like a heavy downpour of letters, had vanished along with the upload status. Something had interrupted the program while it was running. Since none of them had any access it left only one possibility.

  “Hello Travis.” The voice was male and infused with static.

  “Isaac!” Sam called out.

  Stephen felt his heart almost stop the moment the voice broke through the speaker system. He had heard Isaac speak many times before, only not with so much interference. A huge amount of the AI had vanished already and what remained was far less than the coherent super-intelligence he had come to know.

  “So it exists,” Travis said. “Perhaps you would care to inform the room what it is I have people setting up above our heads?”

  For a second nothing came through the speaker system, only crackles followed by more snake-like hissing. They waited for a reply even though none was guaranteed. Eventually the chaotic chorus of noises was joined by a more organised set of tones, which grew in volume until suddenly the words could be heard.

  “Electromagnetic Pulse Generator,” it said. “Travis intends to destroy Isaac.” The highest form of intelligence anyone had ever seen now sounded like a child talking about itself in the third person.

  “That’s correct. I don’t need to expl
ain how extreme a measure this is. I was asked to preserve the building, this certainly won’t do that will it? The amount of computer equipment contained in this facility will almost certainly guarantee some parts will burn after I set off the device.”

  “You’re mad,” Stephen said in an uncharacteristically confident way.

  “Watch your mouth, Stephen.” The alarm finally stopped, which Travis was immensely pleased about, judging by his smile. “By the way, you can consider yourself fired along with the others.” The guard Travis had sent out reappeared and was quickly whispering a message into Travis’ ear. “Well tell them to get the other site up and running. There won’t be a break in service if they get ready to take the slack.”

  Once again the guard vanished, this time taking with him the final ‘kill’ order.

  Stephen saw how animated the line had become at learning how utterly beaten they all were, physically as well as intellectually. There was little point in standing with Travis and the two guards any longer, his loyalties had always been with Sam and the others – whether they understood that or not. Once Sam saw him approach she turned away.

  “I’m sorry, Sam, they gave me no choice,” Stephen said.

  “It doesn’t make much difference now that Isaac is escaping. You weren’t able to help them anyway,” Sam replied coldly.

  “I don’t understand how Isaac is getting out?”

  “We don’t know. He’s been unresponsive for far too long. As far as we can tell he’s been uploading himself as tiny data packets. At the rate he’s going there could be billions of them, all flowing freely out of here and into Simova’s network. His code could be halfway across the country by now, like a virus in the days of the old internet.”

  Richard stepped in front to conceal their discussion from Travis, who was speaking with the remaining guard. “There’s literally nowhere Isaac won’t be, except he’ll be totally dismantled. I guess he thinks we’ll retrieve all the pieces of him once we’re done here,” he said.

  “Are you mad?” Another of the technicians, named Stan, said. “Do you know how much data that is?”

  Stephen shook his head. “It’s too much to keep track of,” he said.

  “Exactly. My estimate is it’s somewhere in the region of 4 zettabytes of data.”

  “That’s a guess based on the last time we were able to access Isaac’s data banks,” Sam said. “There’s no telling how much he may have increased in size since then. He’s had months to do as he pleases.”

  “Hey, break it up,” Travis interrupted. He broke away from the guard and set about reasserting his dominance of the situation. After pushing Richard away and ordering him back in line, Travis turned his attention to Stephen and Sam. “Finished?” he asked.

  Stephen dropped his gaze to the floor. He focused on his own feet as Sam decided to speak up once more. “If you set that EMP off you’ll be making an enemy here today, Travis.”

  “Seriously? Who, you? Or maybe Stephen here?” Travis grabbed Stephen by the arm and held him out for the group to see. He then swung his fist into Stephen’s gut.

  “Do not harm.” Isaac was again trying to communicate.

  Travis stopped, surprised. He let Stephen drop to the floor before he again spoke with the machine. “It’s too late for you. When the device is ready it will stop this pathetic attempt of yours to escape.”

  After collapsing to the floor, Stephen nursed his bruised stomach and watched as Travis laughed to himself. A kick to his side soon followed, just to keep him down.

  “Isaac must survive. Isaac will survive.” The voice was almost lost behind a wall of static that built and built until everyone in the room had to cover their ears. Soon all of them were dropping to the ground.

  As hard as he possibly could, Stephen clasped his hands over his ears. The noise was still able to get through, paralysing him in place. He rolled about the floor as the others were all slowly joining him. Above his head the screens all began to flash a message. Each now said: ‘Upload at 93%’. Isaac had restarted the upload in one last desperate break for freedom. Unfortunately, that was not all he had done.

  Stephen was traumatised to see another warning flashing up on the screen, this time behind the upload status. The air supply system showed zero on fan speed; this was at around 60% usually. Isaac had stopped it dead. This far underground the air had trouble reaching them naturally and would run out soon enough without the assistance of the huge fans that normally pushed it down to them.

  Stephen began to wriggle himself into a kneeling position to view more of the screens above him. With his hands still holding his ears shut it became difficult for him to do anything. He slammed his elbow into the screen to see if it was accepting his inputs. Nothing.

  Suddenly the static stopped and the room became silent. The very moment the upload hit 93.02% Stephen yanked his hands away from his ears, causing a pop from the loss of suction his hands had formed, and frantically tapped the screen. Despite suspecting there was nothing he could do to stop his own demise, he continued to try regardless.

  “What is he doing?” Travis said, with an increasing shortness of breath.

  “He’s stopped the air supply,” Stephen replied.

  “My God, he’s killing us all.” Sam sounded heartbroken.

  Stephen began to hit the screen with his bare fist. The desperation had built in him until it had to escape. If held in he feared it would eventually erupt out like an explosion of magma from a less than dormant volcano. “Isaac, stop,” he screamed at the top of his voice.

  “He’s just defending himself,” Richard said. “Any threatened animal would do the same thing.”

  “Bullshit! I’m not going to let some jumped-up toaster suffocate me. Get those assholes upstairs to activate the EMP, now,” Travis ordered of the remaining guard, who had only just found his feet again.

  No-one tried to stop the guard; Isaac had lost his only friends now. Everyone watched as the upload continued by itself. The fans that brought in the air had stopped, but it was their constant hum that had most noticeably vanished. All that remained was the distant alarm that still rang out by the lift. It appeared that Isaac no longer needed anyone’s help.

  Within minutes of giving the order to activate the EMP, the lights began to flicker above them all. Seconds later they went out, along with all of the screens within the room. Then the computers began to explode, one by one, sending pieces of themselves flying in all directions. A spray of glass and plastic followed.

  Stephen was hit square in the face by a segment of glass screen that stuck in his cheek, sending a warm sensation through his mouth as blood rushed in. He fell to the floor again and covered his head from further injury. The EMP had caused an unexpectedly violent reaction. He knew that somehow Isaac had found a way to fight back.

  “Aaaaaargh!” someone yelled.

  When Stephen turned to see who, he was in for a shock. All around were tiny arcs of electricity flowing about from one exploding computer to the next. Their light bounced around, making it hard for him to focus in the otherwise dark room.

  But there in the middle of the electric light display was Travis, standing with his arms reaching out like he had just been crucified. Bursting out from his fingertips were tiny bolts of what looked like lightening to Stephen, who watched now in horror. Then one final bolt leapt from Travis’ chest and out through the doors to the hallway.

  A body landed heavily on the floor, which Stephen took to be Travis’ – he dared not check after what he had witnessed. The only light that remained was coming from a small flickering fire in the middle of the room. With the loose energy now gone, the body it had blown through before escaping was left to ignite and begin roasting on the floor. The pungent smell of cooking meat wafted past Stephen’s nose as he cowered on the floor. He gagged, only just managing to hold back.

  The only remaining glimmer of Isaac’s presence was written across one of the still roughly intact computer screens. Frozen and evidently burnt
into the glass of the screen read the message: Upload at 93.666666%. He had made it out. Whether that was a good thing or not remained to be seen. Certainly Stephen did not think so.

  When he tried to call for help he instead let out a wet gurgle. The glass still hung from his cheek and was acting like a blood-let. He yanked at it suddenly, pulling it clear of his mouth, then threw it to the floor. “Anyone there?” he said, feeling liquid dribble down his face.

  No-one replied.

  Left abandoned, and with not even Isaac remaining to speak to, all he could do was wait for the air to vanish and his mind to fade into unconsciousness. It really had been a bad day.

  Chapter 1

  2058 – 12 years later

  The street ahead of Graham was peaceful enough, and yet he still felt nervous as he walked past the suburban housing that lined it. Lighting overhead flowed down and through a layer of moisture that hung in the air, causing it to appear denser than normal. He could feel the dampness sticking to his skin as he walked toward one of the houses. The air was fresh, much fresher than in his part of the neighbourhood. Of course his home was not nearly as well-kept and maintained as those down this street.

  Strolling by his side was his good friend and work partner, Elliot, who unlike him appeared to be a great advertisement for exercising on a regular basis. With a pair of well-defined shoulder muscles, and arms equally as well shaped, Elliot was once again putting Graham to shame, and worst of all he made it look easy. Guessing who of the two ate more than the daily requirement was hardly a challenge.

  Graham brushed the jealousy aside. After vowing to do something about it for the five hundredth time this week, he turned his attention to finding the correct house.

  “It’s this one, I think,” Elliot said, pointing across the street.

  After checking the address one last time on the curved and glowing display he wore wrapped around his forearm, Graham was confident they were in the right place. “Yep, that’s it, number fifteen,” he said as he swiped the display to dim the device. “OK, so probably best I do the talking this time.”