Professor Turing made his way up the knoll from his house in the hollow, finding the scene on the road to and from the Computer Science building still playing out. All of the injured had been cared for, with everyone having calmed down somehwat from the ordeal of Carolin's escape from the lab. The crowd of onlookers had grown, to now nearly triple in size, with more arriving as time went by.

Nothing was of greater interest than the appearance of two fire engines—a standard pumper truck, and another with a telescoping ladder, meant to reach the upper floors of a building. Another red emergency vehicle was at the scene, this one parked behind the one the female paramedic had arrived in earlier. It belonged the local fire chief, who was involved in a heated conversation with Captain Criscoe.

"You've got to move this vehicle," the fire chief insisted, of the mobile command center. "It's blocking access to the fire hydrant."

"We're not going anywhere! We have an emergency!"

Residual Halon gas still eked out from the open overhead door to the lab, with its acrid scent tinging the air. The fire alarm no longer blared, but warning lights were flashing, both from within the building and without.

The fire chief gestured dramatically. "Do you see that alarm? Do you smell the gas? There is your emergency."

"It's a false alarm! There's no fire."

"Oh. And I suppose you're the expert."

Professor Turing backed away from the argument the two men were having, right in the middle of the road. He placed himself at a spot on the grass where the mobile command center stood between him and the ongoing scene. There, he found Captain Reynolds standing by the vehicle's left rear wheel, working with two firemen to try to figure out how to get a hose hooked up to the hydrant. One fireman held an axe, and the other a giant crowbar, set to smash and bash at the vehicle until space could be made.

Turing rightly determined that Captain Reynolds was the more stable of the two police officers vying for control over the situation. The Captain opened a storage compartment on the vehicle, near where the hydrant was, with the hope that doing so would offer the firemen the room they needed. Failing at that, he opened the driver's side door and brushed broken glass off the seat, to see if he could get the vehicle to move forward several feet.

Turing noticed Lucas standing on the grass as well, watching the self-same scene. He casually worked his way towards him, on found the young man to be his usual, cheerful self.

Lucas again took note of the hospital pants Turing wore. "Hey, Professor," he said. "I thought you were going to change."

Turing got him to move further away from the crowd, to a place where they could talk with a bit more privacy.

"Lucas," he calmly asked. "Do you know what's going on?"

"Ah... well, not exactly, you see. I was upsairs, as I said, in class when the alarm went off. And everyone left when the screaming began, and lots of other noise too. But when I got here, it was over."

He leaned in to speak quietly. "I heard there was a fight in the lab. Like, a real gunfight. Over Carolin." Lucas came to a realization. "Hey! Is that why you're wearing those scrubs? Did somebody shoot at you?"

Turing smiled. "Not exactly."

He got Lucas to move further away, to a spot where a break in the treeline offered a glimpse of the back of his house. There, as he gestured with his eyes, he got Lucas to take note of his patio, and the damage Carolin had caused. His outdoor furniture lay scattered, some broken, along with shards of glass from the sliding doors she had burst through on her way in. The portable firepit was wedged in the hole where the doors had been, with indoor furniture stacked in a way so that no one could get past.

"Jesus Christ, Professor," Lucas quietly exclaimed. "What happened to your house?"

Turing patiently waited, until he had Lucas' undivided attention.

"Carolin's in there," he said.

Lucas blinked. "What? You mean, you took her from the lab?"

Turing slowly shook his head. "No. She… she escaped. She went in on her own."

"Jesus Christ," Lucas said again.

"Have your heard about the ruckus on the news? About what's going on at the United Nations?"

"Ah… well. You know. I don't much keep up with that sorta thing, but yeah. A lot of people are talking." He came to another realization. "Do you think Carolin had something to do with it?"

Turing slowly nodded. "I do." He leaned further in, his voice barely a whisper. "She can talk, you know. She does things."

"Professor, I am really sorry. I should've told you, but… ahm. Well…"

"But what?"

"She made me promise to keep it a secret. That I wouldn't tell people what she could do."

"Carolin made you promise? What did she say she could do?"

"Well, it's not like she said she could do things. I just know she can. Like, for instance, that parabolic mirror array? She made the whole thing herself! She designed it, and put it together." It was Lucas' turn to lean in. "She can appear human that way."

"I know. A lady made of light."

Lucas became euphoric. "Isn't that amazing? Oh God, Professor! She can do anything!" He again looked at the firepit, wedged in the hole in the wall. "She can even run away."

Turing became somber. "Not really. She took everything with her from the lab. She has it piled up on two carts. I don't know how she's powering it, or keeping it together, or how she's staying connected to the Tian-12 supercomputer."

This time, Lucas had the Professor move a bit further from the crowd, which continued to grow and mill about. "So I chat online sometimes, with people, about what we do in the lab. I'm not giving away secrets, but you know. People talk. And there's this user, you see, that someone found lurking in the Dark, named IDI3557. This guy doesn't say or do anything, but sometimes you can see where he goes, if you can figure out how to track him.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

"I've gotten pretty good at it over time, and a couple of nights ago, I shadowed him for three hours. He opened like, millions of files, in thousands and thousands of systems. Sometimes he used random servers, like public access stuff, but also some that were ultra-secret, and high security. And it was like nothing for him to do it! No security protocol could stop him. It was as if they weren't even there."

"Why are you telling me this?"

"Well, I figured out he was setting up bot-nets. Slaving computers to do his will. He must have rounded up a couple hundred million, with the goal of controlling the flow through the whole cloud, using the Dark Web. The guys online I talk to are calling it The Machine. She's using out-of-band signals, so no one can figure out where she is. And when someone does find they can latch on, she blights them and throws them right out."

"So then, how did you do it? Tracking this person for hours?"

"I think she knew it was me. I mean, there was no way I could hide if she looked, and I'm certain she did."

"You started calling this hacker a her."

Lucas nodded. "That's another thing I figured out. Using Behavior Recognition software from Functional Analysis, I gained logical certainty. IDI3557 is a woman, probably about forty years old. And she lives alone. Her age is mostly a guess, because she has a lot of outliers. Sometimes she acts like a child. But either way, she's uber-smart."

Turing lightly shook his head, to clear it of so many thoughts. "Okay. So a woman is hacking… hacking what? The whole cloud?"

"Yeah. That's what it is, pretty much. But she doesn't take anything, She just looks. I mean, she doesn't even look, so to say. I couldn't tell what she was after, because she was moving so fast. She'd open a file for a split second and like, commit the whole thing to memory, or something. Then she'd drop that, or go to where it was pointing, and open another file, and branch out and do all kinds of stuff. Just going all over the place."

"To do what?"

Lucas took a breath to collect his thoughts. "Okay. So broadband users like the U.S. military have whole swaths of what we call Dead Space, where URLs sit that are never used. And there are servers that are completely unreachable. It's like, there are so many hosts you can use that the capacity of the cloud can never be fully realized. And right now, near as we can figure, through IDI3557, about a couple million of these dead servers belong to her."

"She taking over servers?"

"You can see blocks of Dark user space open up and do all kinds of stuff, then they close and are not seen again. Well, I could anyway, while I was watching. And she was constucting HBT setpoints, I think."

"HBT? Hahn-Banach-Tarski setpoints? Infinite copies of herself?"

"Not infinite. But identical, yeah. One here. One in China, somewhere. And one in California. At or around CalTech, the way I figure, where they also have a Tian-12."

Turing came to the realization that Lucas was leading him towards. "Carolin," he whispered.

Lucas nodded. "And there's another HBT setpoint she created in Massachusetts."

"Where DARPA is headquartered."

"They have a Tian-13 there. It's brand new. It's where they want to take her program."

"And she's already there."

Lucas nodded.

"What's she doing?"

Lucas shrugged. "I don't know. Nothing really, I guess. I think she did it just cuz she can. Like the way she let me watch. She let me track her because she wanted me to."

"But how do you know it was Carolin? I mean, we fight off hackers all the time."

"This was no ordinary hack. Like I said, she wasn't taking. Just looking. And she was letting me go along for the ride."

"And you know that she knew it was you?"

Lucas nodded. "And I know it was Carolin. Because before she kicked me out, she sent me a private message."

They should have built it better if they didn't want me to get in.

"And then she kicked me out. I tried to find her again, but she found me instead. And she sent another message—one that made it certain I would know who she was."

Don't tell people what you know, my good friend. They won't understand.

Please do not tell a soul.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Lucas walked away from the conversation he was having with Turing, stepping a bit to the side in order to see around the fleet of vehicles parked all over the road. Another commotion had begun, judging by the heightened chatter and increase in attention. Turing remained where he was, keeping the mobile command center between himself and Captain Criscoe, and far away from the crowd.

"More people are showing up," Lucas said, informing the Professor of the scene. "It's a big armored car."

The vehicle came into Turing's view, and parked itself curb-to-curb, totally blocking the road—a military-style MRAP recommissioned for civilian use. With tires as big as a man, it towered over all others, making the fire engines look small. Eight men piled out, all dressed like Captain Crisco, and some even moreso, wearing police body armor.

Three big black sedans soon followed. "Uh-oh," Lucas said. "And government goons are here."

Turing approached Captain Reynolds, still standing by the two firemen, who were successfully hooking up their hose.

"Sir?" Turing said. "Captain Reynolds? I'm Professor Turing."

Reynolds gave him a cursory glance. "We're a little busy, Professor."

"I know. I was in the lab."

Captain Reynolds paid greater attention. "What do you know about the lab?"

Turing remained humble. "Everything. I'm the senior professor of robotics."

"You were involved? With that thing?"

"That thing is military hardware. It was put in that building against my will."

"Military grade robotic hardware? In your possession?"

Turing shook his head, maintaining eye contact with the man. "No sir. I've been told I'm in longer in charge. That's why these government people keep showing up, in biack cars and wearing black suits. They want to further weaponize the thing."

Captain Reynolds broke his gaze. He watched the NSA agents in black converse with Captain Criscoe, surrounded by his SWAT team compatriots.

"This is getting out of hand," Reynolds remarked.

Turing agreed. "Yes sir. Yes, it is. And I know what's going on."

The Captain turned his attention back to the Professor. He silently waited for more.

"The robot is fighting for its survival. It's what it was made to do."

"What kind of weapons does it have?"

"It doesn't have any weapons. That's why it ran away. Those people…" Turing gestured towards the NSA agents. "They entered the lab without permission, and started shooting up the place."

Reynolds harrumphed. "They shot first? For no reason?"

Turing shrugged. "They were scared. They don't know what they're doing."

"And you do?"

Access Delaback substation.

"Yes. I'm the senior professor of robotics," Turing re-emphasized.

Disable surge protection on all transformers.

Reynolds began to dismiss him. "Well again, Professor. We're busy. We have to secure the area."

Generate voltage overload.

The ladder truck from the fire department turned on its lights and sounded its siren, causing the two men to jump. It began driving over both curbs, to turn around and leave the scene, as the MRAP was blocking its path. Reyolds left Turing, and went to converse with the firemen by the hydrant.

"There's another fire," one said. "At the transformer station on Delaback Road. The ladder truck is responding, but we're staying here."

Turing trotted up to Reynolds, again gaining his attention. "Captain Reynolds. I know how the robot works, and I've robbed it of its power."

Send heartbeat control override.

"You know how to stop this… thing from attacking again?"

Clock system at six-hundred-thousand-thousand terahertz.

"Yes sir. And I did. She'll no longer be able to function."

Maximize throughput at ten-thousand-million operations per second.

Captain Reynolds spoke loud, to be heard over the ladder truck's siren as it sped away from the scene. "How soon until it no longer functions?" he asked.

Override safety protocol.

"About an hour. No more than two."

Disable CPU coolant.

Professor Turing did his best not to choke, swallowing the ache in his heart so as to speak with authority.

"She'll be dead soon."

From several miles away, the Delaback transformer station sent out a muffled boom. The entire campus of Curry College found itself without power.

"I killed her."

In a pyrotechnic display of untold gore and horror, the Tian-12 supercomputer in Turing's lab exploded.