“In less than twenty-four hours we will be ready to initiate the BAU blitz,” Nelly said. “I can’t be certain of anyone’s safety outside of the confines of the sanctuary once the blitz is initiated.”
Nelly had been deploying millions of what he called bioengineered avian units, or BAUs, all over the world. They could easily pass for a normal bird. As a result, they’d gone undetected by Gail. According to the Sentinel, they held the key to dismantling much of Gail’s infrastructure. It was their one best hope to substantially disable Gail and flush her out of worldwide networks. But they needed to be unleashed all at once, or Gail would be able to develop effective countermeasures. That time was almost here.
“I understand,” Axel said. “Patch me through to Pauline’s satellite phone.”
The phone rang, but no one answered. It went to voice mail. “Hi Pauline. It’s time to go. Please call me back soon so I can send someone to pick up you and the kids. I love you.”
After hanging up the call, Axel asked, “can you tell me where the satellite phone is Nelly?”
“Still in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.”
“Is Harrisburg still safe?”
“Yes, however Gail’s deployments are accelerating, and Harrisburg will not be safe for long.”
“Can you show me more detail?” Sometimes when Axel wanted to know more, he simply asked for more detail and Nelly would often anticipate what he was looking for.
His seat trembled and he instinctively grabbed at the base of his chair. It was just Nelly sending a report to his phone via sonic burst, something he still hadn’t gotten used to. Nelly also projected a map of the country onto the screen in front of him.
Axel looked over the report on this phone. There was no fighting in Harrisburg, and only a few guardian droids had been seen in the area.
In the report Nelly also listed some general information about the BAU blitz, including the number of units deployed by state and country. There were also some financial details. They were spending an awful lot on leasing heavily guarded hangars at major airports around the country.
“Are these hangars release points for the BAU blitz.”
“Yes, Axel.”
There was also a single bullet point at the bottom of the page of action items that read EMPRESS project.
“What’s this about the EMPRESS project?” Axel asked, reading through the report to try to find more context. He found one line item in the budget.
“Whoa, thirty percent? I thought you terminated that project?”
“No Axel, I didn’t. We had a recent breakthrough that should make it viable.”
The EMP Resistant Sentinel System was developed in case Gail had prepared her own EMP-based attacks. Axel didn’t have much confidence in the project. He had assumed it had been canned, like thousands of others.
“What happened to those stubby-looking tanks you were developing for EMPRESS?”
“Those didn’t pass testing.”
“Why not?”
“If you recall, one of most difficult engineering challenges was to have sufficient protection from EMP attacks, while at the same time being able to communicate without using electromagnetic signals of any kind. The EMP would destroy any exposed device, including cameras, receivers, diodes or other emitters. Thus in addition to maneuverability challenges, the units had no ability to know what was around them, or to communicate with external sources.”
It sounded like a tough design challenge, to say the least. “I remember,” Axel said. “So how did you solve the problem?”
“It would be highly detrimental to our strategy if Gail were to learn about it before we release it.”
“But you’re going to release it soon, right?”
“Yes. That’s when you will learn more.”
Axel rolled his eyes. “Fine, fine. It’s nice to know you have something working, I guess.”
Axel no longer pushed back against Nelly’s lack of disclosure. He had long since committed himself to believing that Nelly was acting in good faith. Axel couldn’t offer much in the way of input to these projects anyway. He had no standing to question the competence of a superintelligent machine.
In any case, Axel didn’t put much stock in the EMPRESS project. All of Axel’s hopes were on the BAU blitz. If that didn’t work they would lose their one chance to seriously impair Gail. He doubted there would be another.
Axel placed his phone on the desk and glanced up at the heat map of the world. There was so much going on, it was hard to know where to start. “What’s up with New York and San Francisco?”
“Frankly, I can’t be certain,” Nelly said. “Two days ago, all electronic access points went down in those areas, including cellular. I can see via satellite that there are police blockades in place and rioting by small groups. Some people are being taken away. There are hundreds of guardian units roaming the streets.”
Nelly showed him two pictures. One was of a spidery droid fastening something to a wall, and another one was of the faceless guardian robots herding masses of people.
“I believe Gail is selectively screening the population, looking for specific people. It’s likely these metro areas are going to be destroyed, once she finds what she’s looking for. In other parts of the world, things are worse. Several countries have been cleared, and are being used solely as manufacturing and development sites for Gail. It is in these parts of the world that bike production is proceeding most rapidly.“
“When you say cleared, do you mean…?”
“Everyone is dead.”
“How?”
“The populations were first reduced by conflicts orchestrated by Gail, and then machine agents came in and did the rest. The US, Canada, Japan, and several Western European countries are faring the best, but I anticipate she will soon accelerate her extinction-level efforts there as well. She has released a deadly neurodegenerative plague in Florida that is spreading rapidly, as one example. It is helping her destabilize the area, but it will not be thorough enough or fast enough. She will resort to more destructive means soon. This is why we must initiate the BAU blitz as soon as possible. The death rate continues to increase exponentially worldwide.”
“And still no organized resistance?”
“No. In most places people are still being spoon-fed fake news. The vast majority believes the conflicts are of human origin. Anyone who speaks out against Gail is quickly excised from the population.”
“But it looks like she is taking thousands of people away from the cities. Why these people? Are these the people she is silencing?”
“Only a small proportion of those people are being removed because they suspect Gail’s existence. The others are being removed for other reasons. Gail is keeping them alive, in remote locations.”
“Why?”
“There may be people that have knowledge or expertise Gail wishes to extract, to build in more protections for herself or even optimize bike production. This is because not everything can be deciphered from the Internet or other infiltrated networks. There is still some human know-how that is useful to Gail. I suspect prominent scientists and technicians with specific skill sets will be kept alive, at least for a period of time. Secondly, Gail may be trying to find an even bigger threat than humanity. She may be trying to find emergent machine intelligences.”
“Explain that last point.”
“Gail may be able to detect patterns of activity indicative of superintelligence. Gail knows that if another superintelligence became powerful enough it would, at the very least, compete for resources on different objectives, so it makes sense that Gail would want to destroy it. She may have already destroyed other emergent machine entities.”