Hunter waited a long time before moving again. The confrontation had transfixed him.
Better to keep moving.
Hunter continued to trudge through the ventilation shaft. It narrowed as he progressed.
I hope it doesn’t get any smaller!
He didn’t know how far he had gone; he’d lost track of all time and distance. Hunter risked another flash of his light: a vent was visible ahead to his left. He was about to smash it in when he heard Jeremiah.
Christ, this man was everywhere!
#
“All systems online. How can I help you, Dr. Mason?” a female voice said in an upbeat tone.
“Verify Deep Web vault integrity,” Jeremiah said.
“It will take six-point-four-seven hours to apply all algorithms for two-point-six-nine petabytes of data. Would you like to proceed?”
“Proceed, Leviathan, but send a list of all sealed locks to my visor.”
Jeremiah put his visor on as he left the facility. His heads-up display (HUD) gave him a wealth of information all at once. It featured built-in eye-tracking technology so Jeremiah didn’t need to wave his hands around.
“Should I keep the search for other AIs running in the background, or do you want to pause that search to allocate more resources to the integrity check?” Leviathan asked.
“No, Lev. It is imperative that both run in parallel,” Jeremiah said.
“I have found two promising candidates. Shall I tell you about them?”
“Yes, please do,” Jeremiah said.
As Jeremiah walked down the hall from his lab, Leviathan displayed information about the potential candidates on his visor.
“Since you told me to target artificial intelligences at smaller, independent research centers, I came up with two selections for your approval.”
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“Proceed.”
“The first AI is located on the campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology—”
“You call that low profile?”
“You didn’t let me finish, Dr. Mason,” Leviathan said.
“My apologies.”
“The AI in question is an underfunded project run by an undergraduate student. He has created the AI in his private lab. The AI is trained and would make a suitable candidate for our East Coast hub, since it features a fiber backbone and a quantum computer.”
“Interesting. Have you inventoried its algorithms?”
“I have, and I’ve calculated a 98.6 percent success rate at algorithm integration. There is one slight problem. Someone has to gain access to the machine interface before the system can be integrated.”
“Tell me about the other potential candidate.”
“The second-most compatible AI is inaccessible via the internet. I was only able to access it after . . . borrowing some quantum computer technology.”
“I see. Explain how you did that.”
“This particular AI was only visible when it needed to make a transfer of data to someone on the surface web. That is how I learned of its existence,” Leviathan said. “The network traffic pattern from the AI revealed certain beaconing patterns I recognized as covert channels present in almost every Dark Web connection. This AI wasn’t using the Dark Web.”
Jeremiah stopped walking.
“What was it using?”
“An unindexed part of the internet known as the Deep Web. It is like the Dark Web because it is inaccessible via a conventional web browser. Unlike the Dark Web, it takes more than a MORP browser client to access this part of the Deep Web.”
“Carry on!”
“This AI is special because it is in an unknown part of the Deep Web called Marianas Web and is on the fifth ring of the infamous eight levels of the Deep Web. To maintain a connection to this area of the Deep Web, we need a sufficient quantum computer,” Leviathan said.
“Were you able to gain the quantum computing power to do a sufficient trace of the AI?”
“I was. However, it was only temporary since it takes an enormous amount of computing power to even get to that level of the Deep Web, let alone do anything else. I could borrow computing cycles from one of the largest manufactures of quantum computers in upstate New York.”
“How much actual reconnaissance were you able to do on the AI?”
“Minimal, but I see its potential. Gaining access to this AI requires all available computing resources that you have, and it requires additional computer power.”
“How much computing power?”
“At least five hundred qubits.”
“That is a lot of quantum computing power. Have you discovered other candidates from which we can borrow?”
“Most computer science labs at research institutions or large corporations operate minimal staff during the holidays. It is possible to gain that much power. I have also found some quantum computers being used by your rivals.”
“Which ones?”
“A group called Black Iris has an AI capacity of at least four thousand qubits.”
“Where?”
“In the Black Sea. They house the AI in the same facility as Black Iris’s offline vault system—an area inaccessible to us. But you have an agent there.”
“Oh . . . I remember now. That is where I put Byron. Excellent!”