They Came and Ate Us - Armageddon II: The B-Movie (Armageddon Trilogy Book 2) by Rankin Robert

Author:Rankin, Robert [Rankin, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Far Fetched Books
Published: 2012-04-12T16:00:00+00:00

‘Look Jack, look.’ A hushed group of Zens was bunched about Mad John’s terminal in the Miskatonic basement. ‘See what it’s doing?’ ‘What is it doing?’

‘A bank heist.’ Spike traced the lines of figures moving across the screen. ‘Running off dead accounts.’

‘How much money?’

‘Million and a half, perhaps more.’

‘And where is it taking it?’

‘Back to mother seeker, of course.’

‘What then?’

‘We lose it, Jack.’ John tapped on the keyboard. ‘But not this time. This time it is going to bring it all to us.’

Spike explained. ‘We have isolated it from the seeker, although it doesn’t know that yet. We have created a false image of the seeker here in our system. It will come to us thinking we’re the real thing. Once it’s here we close off the land lines. We have it boxed up tight.’

‘But it’s a program, a hacking program. You talk about it as if it’s some physical object that you can cage up.’

‘It’s AI, Jack. Artificial Intelligence, it has to be, there can be no other explanation. But we’ll soon know. It’s finished eating the bank accounts. It wants to go home.’ Spike seated herself at the next terminal and punched in sequences. ‘It’s on its way. I’m getting a read-out.’

The Zens held a collective breath. Jack whispered, ‘What is she going to do?’

‘Once it is in her system she’ll feed it a loop so it can’t think its way out. Then we pull the land-line. Then it’s all ours to do what we want with.’ Jack bit his lip. It was clever stuff. These people ran rings round him.

‘I’ve got it! It’s in! Closing the system. Pull the land-line, John.’ Spike keyed in a closedown and Mad John whipped out the phone-jack from its socket in her terminal.

‘Gotcha!’

Cheers erupted. Spike climbed on to a desk and raised her slender hands. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, we now have one-twelfth of a seeker and you will be pleased to know it has brought us all a bonus. About thirty thousand dollars each. As soon as we can find a way to get it out.’ To further applause she danced a little jig and leapt down into Jack’s arms. Jack gave her an amorous hug. He had really fallen on his feet by taking Spike as a lover - such sex, and money too. Jack thought it prudent not to mention to Jonathan that they had actually captured part of the seeker until the Zens had managed to run off the stolen money and share it out. ‘Well done,’ he told Spike. ‘Very well done.’

‘Easy-peasy. One down and eleven more to go.’

‘Hold it!’ Mad John’s shout rose above the cheering. ‘Wait. What’s this?’

‘What is it?’ Spike peered over his shoulder.

‘Look at the screen. You closed the system down correctly, didn’t you?’

‘Of course. But it’s glowing red. Pull the mains plug someone.’ Jack ducked under the desk and tore the plug I from the wall.

‘Damn, it’s hot.’

‘Some kind of feedback, or what?’ John gazed at the screen.

‘Still red. That can’t be, there’s no power.

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