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Almost a kilometer under the surface of Venus, Bill sat in the only chair within the freshly compiled command center for Casa’s Fuel Farm. He reviewed the schematics for the facility on the large display console rather than use his VR while he waited for the matter compiler to finish printing.
He wanted to ensure that every aspect of the remote base was working. At some point very soon, his life might depend upon it. The base design expanded and rotated with his nimble manipulation of the console’s control panel.
A ring of ten fusion plants was planned. Two had already been fabricated and were running at 40% capacity. The details on the equipment bloomed with detail on the display. Each fusion power reactor could produce 10 GW of power, significantly larger than his power plants that he used for his ship.
Currently, that power was operating the intake chutes, the industrial sizes matter compilers, and servicing the burgeoning cadre of mechanical robots and devices that were rapidly multiplying.
The intake chutes were passively pulling atmosphere into the compilers as feedstock for diamondoid foundations, walls, and smart matter productions. Valuable gases would be saved, and byproducts would be used as reaction mass for Casa’s new generation of SpaceStrider ships.
Electrical materials requiring rare earth elements were the bottleneck now. Mining tunnellers rapidly drilled, but even with advanced nanotech machines, safely moving tons of matter took time. The site was chosen for its proximity to a selection of metallic elements but harvesting them quickly still required old-school mining techniques.
Bill smiled. Casa was back to her old self and outpacing him by significant margins. He was glad for her. As much as he wanted to help innovate and monetize his new technology, he needed to find answers to the coming crisis.
He had the doomsday clock constantly in his HUD, reminding himself that every second lost was a step closer to Apex’s unknowable catastrophe. He needed to get to work on multiple plans. The matter compiler dinged, and the industrial-sized door hissed as the chamber decompressed.
Bill walked in and surveyed the contents. Laying on the ground were four identical copies of…himself. He dropped to the first and summoned a jolt of power into the subdermal contact pads lining his palms. He pressed above and below the copy's heart and activated the shocking touch. The man on the floor jolted…once, twice…and gasped explosively; shuddering as his heart and lungs began to function.
“Hey there. Take it easy. I’ll awaken the others. You situate yourself. We have a lot to do.” Bill said. After a brief moment, he turned back to the other prone figures. He didn’t need to rush like old times before augmentations. However, even with fully oxygenated respirocytes in his duplicate's bloodstream, he didn’t want to delay. He hated being helpless and he found even seeing a duplicate like this was too much. Over his shoulder, he heard his clone speak.
“Damn, I’m the copy.”
“We’re all copies. You know how we’re going to run this. We’ll all merge every night into a central copy. We play it safe, but this will multiply our work effort and reduce our collective risk.” Bill responded.
“Easy for you to say. You’re the only one with a full suite of daemons.” His copy said, teasingly. Bill sighed.
“I’m sorry about that. But you know we can’t download any extra daemon copies, right?” Bill asked.
“I know, I know. God damn it. No footprints on the indexes and we stay out of Apex’s sight.” The copy grumbled.
“Hey, look on the bright side. We all get digital AI versions of ourselves to help out with the extra data work.” Bill said. No less than 2 physical copies and three digital copies responded as the second copy got himself awake.
“Yay me!” “[Yay me!]” “yeah.” “[whoop de do.]” “[I gotcha back!]”
“Oh brother..” Bill said.
Each clone and digital copy got to their feet; their movements carefully desynchronized as if to prove their independence as they brushed off the non-existent dust from their shoulders. Bill, both original and duplicates, split up, heading towards different sections of the Venusian base, while their AI counterparts booted up, ready to assist. The fuel farm buzzed with activity; every action coordinated to avoid the impending doom that Bill's HUD ominously counted down to.
“All right boys, last mini mission before we tackle the Shadow gate, we need a secure location for a gate terminal. Venus is one of the last truly unexplored planets left, so let’s use that.” Bill said. One of his copies took the narrative and continued.
“Exactly…but we need to keep the gate array far away from the fuel farm. Distance is irrelevant when we’re dealing with portal tech.” This clone was winding up, but another interrupted.
“We need to prepare some defense in depth to prevent hostile use of the portals. We need split-second shut-offs and high-density foglets with active nanotics. Hmmm, maybe make it all military EMP resistant and load up with Focus EMP charges.”
Another chimed in, “That’s all swell, but that MIT ShadowGate incursion was too fast and deadly. We want concentrated Masers armed and ready constantly…or better yet, nukes with Deadman triggers.”
Bill interrupted. “Okay boys, you get to it. We all know the plan. I’ve got to check in on Casa while you iron out the details and fabrications. Oh… maybe one of you should pretend to be Virgil. You all know that we have a bad habit of force escalation. We can't forget to game theory the unintended consequences. Good luck, after this we start the prep for our ShadowGate investigation.”
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Bill’s footsteps echoed in the corridor as he headed towards the one transit portal back to the Freedom. Casa was waiting.
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Apex reviewed the temporal mapping. Despite his early promise to himself, he had terminated the growing nascent Super AI. There was already a well-positioned disgruntled worker at the facility. Merely impersonating his therapy Daemon had triggered the man to sabotage the servers and rampage amongst the researchers.
The visualization of the timeline was still chaotic and shifting constantly, but the clear tunnel representing Apex’s survival still passed the dangerous wall and was stable. Apex looked for Bill again with no luck. Apex knew the man was capable, self-sufficient, and stubborn. The map still indicated he was or would follow Apex’s demands.
Bill’s kids were now both on Luna, fulfilling Apex’s predictive model with 97% accuracy. It refocused. Finally, it had made inroads into the troublesome Labyrinth. Apex now had multiple unwitting agents in play within that opaque territory. The uplift Max had entered the second stage. The models continued to stabilize, at least regarding his critical variables.
Apex scanned the nets. It needed more. The terminus continued to approach at a rate of one second per second. Apex returned to the news feeds. Skirmishes between the uplifted and humans continued, with some areas beginning to collaborate. The AI movement was picking up pace, crippling the innovation farms and communications servers.
Apex’s circuits hummed, looking for actions to refine the model. It looked and it waited with heightened anxiety. It forcibly restraining itself from acting to correct the chaos; biding its time.
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The DAIE had finally infiltrated the Labyrinth. The team was almost finished with the Gauntlet level and was primed for the next level. Agent Tyrel Reeves had initiated and was the AIC (Agent in Command) for this operation. He had specifically recruited Tech Savant Viviane Morse, Vance Givens from security, Agent Donahue Morgan, and Intern Shu Xin Liang for his investigation.
Tyrel thought that the inclusion of the older security guard and the young intern was probably what finally tricked the AI screen into allowing the group in. He wasn’t certain what demographic algorithm the Labyrinth used to select entries, but he’d finally gotten lucky. He’d reduces the general effectiveness of the group in favor of variety. Whatever variable that the Labyrinth had used in the past to weed out all of the previous DAIE’s teams had finally been sidestepped.
Tyrel crushed the empty beer can and threw it with superhuman accuracy into the MC’s hopper for recycling. Viviane was meditating in the lounge area of the rest zone. Agent Donahue was reloading his old-fashioned weapons with Vance. Tyrel tilted his neck until it snapped, releasing his built-up tension. He strolled over to the pair of men.
“Hey boys, check the OverLayer map. Looks like our favorite intern is finally gonna clear his Gauntlet path End Boss. It’s about god damn time. He’s been slowing us down for the last three levels. One of you wanna go get him? This should be the last level, right?" Tyrel remarked, with a mix of sarcasm in his voice.
Donahue nodded, checking the ammunition one last time. "Right boss. Stage two here we come. Old Vance here has been giving Shu some pointers. Looks like six times is a charm.” He said, chuckling.
“Give the little Shu a break, Reeves. Unlike us, this is his first time using augs. He’s getting better. He might need a little extra time and attention is all.” Vance said, getting up.
“You’re an old softy, Vance. Go get Junior back here, double time. This level is a bust. We’ve done everything here and we need to get moving. Time to hit the next level.” Tyrel said. Vance picked up his weapons, holstered them, and jogged off.
“Hey Tyrel, what was the deal with that kid anyways? Didn’t he go AWOL for a week? I heard he was found drugged out of his mind in a brothel in Fiji and got shipped back to NYC with a warning not to come back.” Donahue said.
“Not sure, buddy. I think he may have snapped with that break-in we had. He was right in the middle of it when it all went down. The poor kid broke his nose slowing down the thief. The kid claimed amnesia and didn’t know how he ended up in Fiji. I’m inclined to ignore it, since I’m pretty sure his age bracket was what shifted our chances to get in here. Just watch him closely. If he loses his composure down here, we might lose him early.” Reeves said, watching Vance disappear down the corridor to the Gauntlet stage.
Tyrel coughed three times. Vivian’s eyes snapped open. Tyrel made a circle gesture with his finger and the three joined hands. Tyrel launched the close circuit VR meeting, the scene of a bland office with displays materialized in their shared mind view.
They all took seats and Tyrel opened the discussion, indicating levels 1 through 9. Points bloomed where he stabbed. “I planted wiretaps as indicated, all major router bus lines. I’ve logged all the comms traffic, but my decryption skills have yet to crack it. In all the major boss battles, I’ve tried escalating override commands to force their AI into compliance with no luck. We’ve got documented evidence of at least 13 discrete AI without mandated alignment protocols. Next.”
Donahue spoke up. “I managed to sample and analyze the nano from the intro level and the resistance training level. No indications of replication, but they are not design-locked. They could be further weaponized. The designs are not on any licensed fab nets, by the way.”
Viviane saw Donahue was done and added. “Something occurred halfway through our delve. The matter compiler fab index was massively truncated about three levels in. I’m not sure if this is a sign that the AI detected my snoop spikes or not. My network intrusion couldn’t get past the host AI firewalls, but I can keep trying.”
Tyrel nodded and sighed. “Ok. Make sure you both record this shared file. Neither Vance nor Shu are cleared for our operational orders here. Viviane, please pass them an encrypted file for HQ. They think this is just part of the augmentation training program for new agents. They’re likely going to be the first knockouts in the next stage. They can act as data mules to give HQ our first report. We need at least two of us to get to the next stage to provide HQ with the full 2-Stage report. With the way the Labyrinth operates, getting any data for Stage 3 isn’t likely to work. All of our med bots have been script-patched to copy our report log file physically onto our epidermis armor, encrypted to look like standard adhesion patterns. I hope that will get past the AI checks during a backup restoration, but it might not.” Tyrel finished. Donahue whooped and added.
“This mysterious Builder has finally fucked up by letting us in here. These violations will garner some UN support for the revocation of their sovereign status. Soon it’ll be time to unleash a can of Whoop-Ass on these lawbreakers. I take all my complaints back, man. Resetting our augs and entering the training cycle again was worth it. This will be a great add to all of our case metrics.”
“Good instincts, Reeves. I knew tagging along for this op was a good idea. Let’s make it happen. We’ll follow your lead.” Viviane said seriously with only a slight smirk.
Tyrel looked up at the map and thought to himself.
There is way more going on down here than just copyright theft, AI design malfeasance, and minor nano infringements. Those goddamn Fates and the Builder are up to something. I need to figure out what. Fuck them if they think they are immune to rules…and right on my damn doorstep, too.
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