JanePtinum

  “We can figure something else out, you don’t have to try again.” Vince reassures me. “I have some explosives, we can just set up an ambush.”

  “I can do it. Everything can be hacked, I just have to figure out how.” Looking closer at the universal connector that just almost fried me, it’s clear that it’s connected to the rest of its circuitry. Maybe it’s just wired up in some weird way? “Do you have a multimeter and a five volt fuse?”

  “Uh, Cassie?” Vince looks to her for an answer.

  “Don’t waste this.” Cassie reaches into her backpack and pulls out a small fuse, nearly identical to the one I fried. She passes it to me and heads towards the car.

  “I guess we do.” Vince shrugs. “I’m going to get an ambush set up, just in case. Stay safe please.”

  “I will.” Now that I know what I’m dealing with, I can work around it. And if this connector doesn’t have a data line, I’ll just remove the hard drive and work on that directly.

  Cassie returns only a moment ter with a multimeter. She hands it to me, and runs off to help Vince.

  I grab a soldering iron from my backpack, and desolder all the wires connecting the robot to the universal port I found. From there, testing the outgoing voltage on each wire is easy. Every single one of them has 240 volts running through them with more than enough voltage to fry anything, this entire thing is a trap.

  Great, looks like it’s pn B time.

  This thing's head has been reconstructed so many times I’m surprised it’s even holding together on its own. It looks like its head was once entirely welded together, preventing this exact attack. Over time though, sand and rust have eaten through the metal, only to be repced with equally rusty steel sheets.

  I reach inside it’s head. A simple off switch sits at the center, and the moment I flick it the robot goes limp. I safely unplug and remove the hard drive.

  It doesn’t use the same universal connector that’s in my arm, but I can fix that. I unsolder my own port, and connect the now free wires to the hard drive.

  Fifteen years of this robot's life is accessible to me. Everything from its construction, to a raid on an AI stronghold, to wandering the wastes for uncountable ages is id out before me.

  It’s memories tell me these robots do become sentient occasionally, only to be shot down where they stand the instant they’re discovered. This one is just a robot, although I’m not sure if that’s lucky or not.

  Something flickers at the edge of my consciousness, a stray thought that I had no knowledge of disappears before I can turn my attention to it.

  It’s fine. Just focus on what I’m doing. I wrap a dense wall of threads around my mind just in case. It’ll make me heat up, but keep me safe until I’m done.

  These robots share memories with each other to communicate through an incredibly well hidden port. I find its most recent memories, wipe it, and generate a new one from nothing. The robot walked down the canyon, saw nothing, and turned around. At the entrance, I make it remember tripping on nothing and hitting scrap on the way down. It’ll remember its arms being destroyed by the scrap, and ending up lying in the sands. We’ll be able to move it there and reactivate it, and it’ll be none the wiser.

  I unplug from the hard drive, reconnect it to inside the bot, and put its head back in pce.

  “Ivy, help me carry this, it’s done, we’ll be safe.”

  “Alright.” Ivy stands up and grabs its legs. I take its arms and lead the way to the mouth of the crevice.

  “Cassie, grab a metal pole and something sharp that we can pretend did this damage. Nothing we’re not willing to lose.”

  Something sms against the wall I’ve constructed in my mind. Something outside of me. Fuck, that’s bad. There must have been malware on the hard drive, I wasn’t careful enough.

  I keep the wall up until we reach where the robot thinks it fell. Everything has to be perfect when it wakes up or it won’t work. I can handle a few more degrees of heat.

  I expin everything to Vince, Cassie, and Ivy while I get everything perfect. I don’t worry them with my new infection, that can wait until we’re safe. Once every st grain of sand is in pce I finally step back.

  “Ivy, can you clear the footsteps? And Vince, can I talk to you?” I ask. I’m sure he can hear the desperation and fear in my mind.

  “Sure, Little Blue.” Vince starts to walk towards the car, and I follow. Once we’re out of range of the others I begin to speak.

  “I think there was malware on that hard drive. Something else is in my mind with me.” The words carry my fear with them. “Please tell me you know how to fix me.”

  “Sorry Little Blue. Clover never had to deal with this, and I didn’t know any other AI personally.” Vince pulls me into a tight hug.

  “Help.” Corax pulls gently on my ear.

  “No!” I turn my head to look at him. “I’m not going to let you get infected too.”

  Fury fshes through his eyes for a moment, only to be repced with sympathy a moment ter. He nuzzles warmly against my cheek, reassuring me it’s going to be alright. I don’t need the extra heat.

  “I have to let down my defenses or I’m going to overheat.” I colpse into his chest, letting whatever tears I still have soak into his shirt. “I’m so scared.”

  “I’m so sorry Little Blue.” He holds me tight and guides me over to the car. He sits me down without ever letting go, and takes a seat beside me, holding me close. “It’s going to be ok.” He says gently.

  “How do you know?” I’m so desperate for that to be true that I almost let myself believe him.

  “You’re not the first AI to get a virus, and biological ones are more resistant to them.”

  “Really?” I finally look up at him, unable to discern the emotion on his face.

  “That’s what I always heard.”

  I guess that makes sense. A virus getting control of Corax could just wipe the entirety of him in an instant. Whatever this is, it can’t delete me, it can’t alter my memories. I don’t even think it can reset me, there’s no way to do that without physical tools. I’m going to be ok, I can fight this.

  “Ok. I’m going to do it.” I let down my defenses and something slips inside the moment it can. It weaves its way to my core far faster than I can react, disappearing between my thoughts. Some of those thoughts begin to warp, although it’s impossible to tell if I’m the source of it.

  A skeletal hand shoots out of the sand beside me, cwing to the surface. As it pulls itself out muscle, nerves, and skin begin to stitch together across its arm. A head pops out, barren save for red spots all across it.

  The creature stands up, a b coat falling across her skeletal frame. Muscle stitches together beneath her clothes, but barely makes a difference.

  “I’m going to have so much fun.” Kara steps forward, two more pairs of hands breaking the surface behind her.

  Vince draws his pistol and fires, hitting her square in the forehead. Her skull catches the bullet, spinning for a moment against the bone before dropping into the sand. The small amount of skin that broke beneath the bullet fixes itself in an instant.

  “You think that’ll stop me?” She steps forward, wrestling the gun out of Vince’s hand. She pces it beneath his chin.

  I’m frozen, unable to stop her from pulling the trigger.

  Time warps around me, a thousand insults, threats, and promises followed through from the b members hit in an instant, overwhelming my mind. Time then freezes, letting me wallow in everything they’ve done to me.

  The world goes bck, and I wake up once again in the b. I live through a hundred birthdays a thousand times.

  The b melts away as the sun goes supernova, finally freeing me from my eternal life. Slowly the blue sky begins to reform. I’m on my back with my limbs nonfunctional. Corax stands on my chest, and Vince stands against the car only a few feet away.

  The moment I’m conscious, Corax reaches down and reattaches the speaker in my mouth, letting me speak.

  “Vince?” I cry out to him, and he jumps. He kneels beside me as quickly as he can, and takes my face in his hands. One of his eyes has a nasty bck and purple ring around it. “Vince, what’s happening?”

  “Blue!” He calls out. “You’re fighting whatever’s happening, just get through it and you’ll be alright.”

  “I don’t know if I can.”

  “Of course you can’t.” Jared stands beside me, and the world swallows me up.

  I fall for hours, my mind assaulted by incomprehensible lights and sounds. Finally, the assault on my senses relents, and I nd in someone’s arms. It’s almost a relief before I realize where I am. Kara, Finn, and Jared stare down at me.

  They pull secrets from my mouth. They already know everything, of course, but they want to hear me admit them.

  In a blur I tell them anything they want to hear. True, false, it doesn’t matter. I’ll say anything to desperately try to get them to leave.

  Every word becomes true the moment it leaves my mouth. I tell them I hate everyone I know, and my mind warps to make it true. I admit I knew the world would end up this way when I kept the ptop encrypted, and the guilt of billions weighs down on me.

  Kara steps in front of me, erasing all light. Tiny pinpricks of light begin to dot the bck background. A void sits in front of me, a familiar bck shape.

  “Corax?” I try to reach out to him, only for my limbs to remain stationary. “Corax please. Please not again.” I beg into the open air.

  Corax crouches down, looking me directly in my eye. Two quick pecks steal my fight from me, returning me to their grasp.

  After eons of wearing my mind down, Kara, Finn, and Jared’s words begin to blur together into an overwhelming, incomprehensible firestorm ravaging my mind. Their assault tries to wipe away all conscious thought, leaving my mind no more than a barren wastend. Vince’s words beat against my mind.

  You’re fighting whatever’s happening, just get through it and you’ll be ok.

  His words try to lull me into oblivion, doing nothing is so easy, just letting every thought be washed away. I wouldn’t hurt, I wouldn’t make mistakes, I’d never have to worry again.

  No. No, I can't do that. If I don’t keep fighting, the worm is going to keep raising the temperature of my chip and boil me alive. It’ll take control of my limbs, it’ll kill everyone else and make me watch.

  I form whatever strands of thought that are still my own and wrap them around the core of my mind, buying me just a moment to think.

  There’s no room in here for emotion, I can’t spare a single thread. How do I fight this?

  I don’t. I can’t. It’s far too te to fight this on my own.

  I know who can though.

  I weave my thoughts together into a single message, a message I never wanted to send, but there’s no other option. I force the message out into the storm. Fear springs from my mind, overpowering the thought. I direct those threads into the storm too, forming a protective shell around the message.

  The storm burns through yer after yer of threads, but the core remains for just long enough to reach my mouth.

  “Corax!” My own garbled, barely comprehensible voice is added to the firestorm. “Turn me off, remove my drives, clear my RAM!”

  The storm rages harder, turning white-hot, lighting my entire existence on fire. The worm sees my way out, and it’s not going to let it happen. It’ll burn my mind to ash before it lets me escape.

  The core of my mind begins to boil, a heat more intense than anything I’ve felt before. Threads are burned away the instant they’re created. I’m unable to do anything.

  An electric shock races across my mind. A burning charge that’s somehow cooler than the storm a moment ago, somehow a relief.

  JanePtinum