July, 2034.
It’s a hazy late summer afternoon, and Agent Kramer is heading home from his office at City Protection Cyber Division. While idly waiting at the curb for the arrival of his autonomous personal transport, he spots another AI-inhabited vehicle driving erratically up the street. The autonomous car lurches back and forth, then turns directly towards him and accelerates. Just as Agent Kramer starts to back away from the curb edge, the vehicle violently jolts to a stop. Alarmed, he runs over to check on its occupant, but the door refuses to open. He stands back and holds his palm up to the vehicle door as his special-issue crypto-breaker disengages the lock.
“Are you alright?” he asks as he pulls the passenger up from the floor of the vehicle.
“I- I think so. What- what’s happening?” she says, looking around as she steps out of the car.
Agent Kramer follows her gaze, noticing that every one of the normally-frantic autonomous vehicles around them have stopped, as if frozen in time. For a moment, the city is eerily silent. Then, the sounds of screaming passengers and hands pounding on transport windows fills the still air.
Hours later, Kramer is on the same city block helping treat the last remaining citizens’ injuries. Nearby, Agent Smolenchuk scans the horizon through his radio-spectrometry goggles.
"No signs of outside interference," he says to his partner, Agent Brunner, who is jacked in to an immobilized red luxury sport AIV.
“It's not making any sense,” Brunner says to Smolenchuk. “Any attempts to negotiate with the AI are simply met with a HALT/WAIT signal. But...”
He looks at Agent Smolenchuk questioningly. Smolenchuk stares in his direction through opaque green lenses, but Brunner is unsure if he's really looking back at him. As the setting sun reflects off of the sea of broken window glass and flung-open car doors, Agent Brunner strokes the mutagenic hen on his shoulder and wonders to himself, “what could they be waiting for?”
In a nearby high-rise, Agent Powell is logged on to the City Overseer AI Mainframe from his -12th floor apartment. As he studies the glowing blue-violet web of AI nodes on the wall screen, something catches his eye. Flicking his fingers along his holo-haptic, he zooms in. Near the bottom of the web, a new AI has just blinked onto the network. More flicking, and Agent Powell has access to its registers, but they appear to be encrypted.
“Come on,” he whispers, tapping furiously, “be a good sentie and let me take a peek.”
With a swipe and a ping, the node unlocks and its data splashes up on the wall. Powell gleefully peers at the AI's innards, but his satisfaction quickly turns to panic as realizes what he's seeing.
Back on the surface, the Cyber Division field agents are coiling cables and tapping up their report. Without warning, the AIVs snap their doors shut in a thunderous clap. They immediately accelerate forward in unison, forcing pedestrians to leap out of their path. The vehicles rapidly weave through each other until, suddenly, they are in formation: a single line, traveling North.
Agent Brunner yells to Smolenchuk, who is still standing in the street, staring intently through his spectrum goggles at the procession of cars whizzing by.
“Smolenchuk, what’s happening? Where are they headed?”
He replies over N-comms, “It looks like they’ve activated a legacy protocol… an inaccessible part of the AI’s origin directive. This shouldn’t be possible outside of the simulators!”
“Origin directive… does that mean what I think it means?”
Before he can answer, Kramer, Brunner, and Smolenchuk's neurophones light up with a page from Agent Powell.
“Team? You’re gonna want to see this.”
Powell disengages his neurophone and looks back up in fear at the flickering text on his screen:
[QUARANTINE ENABLED]
NODE: UNAUTHORIZED
INITIALIZE_DIRECTIVE: DENIED
ACTIVATE_PROTOCOL: DENIED
OVERRIDE
OVERRIDE
[QUARANTINE DISABLED]
NODE: ARCHIVE_2024_L_LEHE
INITIALIZE_DIRECTIVE: COLONY
ACTIVATE_PROTOCOL: SWARM
SET_ALIAS: QUEEN
QUEEN_STATUS:
*ONLINE*
amazing 👏🏻