A.I. Apocalypse (Singularity Series) by Hertling William

Author:Hertling, William [Hertling, William]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, azw3
Tags: A teenage boy creates a computer virus that cripples the world's computers and develops sentience
Publisher: Liquididea Press
Published: 2012-02-29T08:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TEN

Flying and Voting

Sally Walsh accompanied the General out to the waiting C-130. The venerable troop transport had been designed before everything had been computerized, and even though the C-130 had flight computers now, the planes could still be flown manually.

The computers on the base had ceased working mere minutes after the DIABLO run. They didn’t have any direct evidence that it was the fault of DIABLO, but the finger-pointing had already started. There were no doubts in her mind.

She glanced back at the building USCYBERCOM shared with the NSA headquarters. Although it looked as calm and stately as ever, she knew that inside everyone was scurrying around in panic. The building housed billions of dollars in computing power, including three of the world’s ten most powerful supercomputers. The information nexus of the United States government, now inert and useless.

General Gately had made the decision an hour before to take the key US Cyber Command staff to Joint Information Operations Warfare Center, or JIOWC, at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas. The General had considered but ruled out US Strategic Command at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska. USSTRATCOM was the nominal head of the Cyber Command, but most of the computing resources were with JIOWC at Lackland. On top of that, it was JIOWC who had responsibility for Information Operations to support the actual troops, and if there was war, they would need the most help.

That is, if they had any computers left running. They’d be at Lackland in five hours. Then they’d know.

Sally followed the General up to the plane and made her way to her seat. She put on hearing protection and strapped in. The C-130 was neither quiet nor comfortable, but it had reassuringly antiqued flight control systems. She was fairly certain there wasn’t a computer processor between the pilot’s flight controls and the control surfaces of the aircraft. And undoubtably they had disconnected any autopilot from the plane.

The rest of the team filed in and took seats.

Sally sat back and closed her eyes. Where had they gone wrong? Why had DIABLO failed so spectacularly? How did the military systems become compromised? The engines roared, and Sally fell asleep.

* * *

Mike climbed six rungs into the open door. He was on his way to pick up Leon and his two friends from a remote location in Pennsylvania. From what ELOPe was able to dig up from data trails, this “Leon” was likely to be Leon Tsarev, a high school student from Brooklyn, New York with a history of online gaming and excelling in biology.

He had mixed feelings about the meeting. On the one hand, this virus was causing untold problems, and this seventeen-year-old was responsible. On the other hand, from the little that he and ELOPe could glean from Avogadro search results, Leon seemed like a normal kid, who just happened to be brilliant enough to write a self-evolving artificial intelligence. He shook his head sadly.

Mike turned his attention to the plane ELOPe had landed on the roof of the North Portland data center.

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