Tales from the Cobra Wars by Max Brooks

Author:Max Brooks [Brooks, Max]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4804-2450-0
Publisher: IDW Publishing
Published: 2013-03-04T23:21:00+00:00

Duke turned and bolted away down the corridor. Brainstorm took this as his cue to run in top speed in the other direction. He made it about ten yards before the Joe-Bot detonated.

The grenade must have set off the Joe-Bot’s remaining explosive shells. The explosion knocked Brainstorm off his feet, and he had several racks of servers between him and it at the time. It roared like thunder that rolled forever, and Brainstorm’s head was still reeling when Duke scooped him up and set him back on his feet.

The entire complex seemed to be on fire now. Duke and Brainstorm kept their heads down against the smoke and raced for the newly made exit. Flames licked at its sides, but Duke grabbed Brainstorm by the arm and dragged him straight through it. They came through scorched but intact and fell into the waiting arms of Barrel Roll and Scarlett.

SEVEN

ONCE THE JOES were safely aboard the sleek black transport jetting them out of Russia, Duke asked Brainstorm the obvious question. “What the hell just happened back there?”

Brainstorm coughed his throat clear. “I ignored it at the time, but when we made our way into the facility something struck me as strange. Think about it: for Cobra’s money laundering operation to work, that game lab should have been filled with live players, not unstaffed servers.”

“Maybe they heard we were coming and simply cleared out,” Barrel Roll called back from the cockpit. “Krivo must have told them.”

“Sure, but you remember the monitors before Destro took them over?”

“They showed characters playing the games,” said Scarlett.

“Right,” said Duke, “but if there wasn’t anyone there controlling them, then how did that work?”

“It seems that Cobra has developed a stunningly sophisticated software bot system—almost to the level of an artificial intelligence—to play the games for them,” said Brainstorm. “They’re years ahead of any other faction.”

“They have programs pretending to be their characters?” asked Barrel Roll.

“And doing a frighteningly fine job of it,” said Brainstorm. “When I hooked up my control pad to their network of servers to copy their accounts, the AI invaded my system instead. After that, it took over control of the Joe-Bots, copying itself into their limited memory. It could only rely on the Joe-Bots’ sensors, but it was clever enough to realize it needed to shoot at the things the Joe-Bots’ original programming was supposed to be protecting.”

“And vice versa?” said Duke.

“Right. That’s why it didn’t shoot at me when I held up the control pad. It recognized the pad as one of its own kind.”

“Did you know that was going to work?” said Barrel Roll.

“Yes.” Brainstorm blew out a sigh. “Kind of.”

“So tell me something,” Scarlett said. “If the Joe-Bots and this entire operation were such a disaster, why are you smiling?”

Brainstorm hadn’t realized he’d had a grin on his face until then. “Because we came out of there with something far more valuable than several million gold pieces in a fantasy-adventure MMO. As Destro said, that wouldn’t have hurt Cobra much.” He waved the control pad in front of the others.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.