Tonight Samantha was infiltrating a particularly difficult mainframe. She knew nothing about the company housing it, or the nature of their business. All she knew was something powerful lay inside. Her best friend had promised as much.
A miniature robot-puppy yipped its presence and struggled to carry an enormous newspaper to her feet. This was her scout-bot, its processes dragged down under the strain of transferring so much data. Samantha waited for her new data harvester, the one not programmed, but befriended.
As if on cue, it hovered out of the darkness, an obsidian ball floating in the air dangling tentacles below it that curled and twitched instinctively. The toy-puppy whined at it and curled its tail between its legs, but the jellyfish of a bot took no notice. Samantha could see a knot of tentacles carrying something. These unraveled to produce a data cube, which it held out to her.
"Thank you, she said, gently taking the strange object to examine it. "Library of Congress," she read, and then to the bot, 'Where did you get this?"
Of course it could not reply, so she jumped when she heard the familiar voice say, "A hacker friend of mine gave me a copy." Samantha looked to her instant-messaging bot, a teetering tripod holding up a video phone for attention. The screen was black, meaning it was her best friend.
"Hi Flatline," she greeted, stowing the library away and stooping to pick up the newspaper. Her eyes widened surveying what she found. She looked to the instant messenger. "There's some cool toys in there. Let's go see."
The newspaper contained SWA's vast inventory database. Thousands of tables drawn out in a map that looked like a tangled web. Lines connected different tables through their data keys, like places connected with road names. Samantha knew exactly what she wanted to see first and navigated through the hole in the massive logo two bots struggled to keep pried open. The database was easy to find, after which it was simply a matter of traveling through the proper sequence of tables along the appropriate data keys. She unlocked the schematics, so old and untouched SWA had probably forgotten they had patented them.
"That laser could turn Miami beach into one huge glassy blob," Flatline noted from the instant messenger, "If it didn't melt down from its own heat."
Samantha grinned smugly, "Too bad they don't have the heat sink Nanotech Possibilities invented years ago. It's microscopic, so I could distribute it equally throughout the scope to keep the entire system cooled."
"Fascinating," Flatline said approvingly and Samantha felt a warm flush of pride wash over her, "You are brilliant MotherMayI."
"Thank you," she said, blushing. Flatline was always generous with his praise. She remembered where she was, "I have to leave here before the server security detects me." She downloaded the duplicated files to herself and made to leave.
"Don't worry about that," Flatline said soothingly, "The cycs are cloaking us."
An SWA sweeper-bot hummed down the hallway that represented a relationship between tables. Samantha gathered the helper bots close and tried slipping off the server, but could not. She reached up and felt around her head to pull the VR helmet off, but could not find it. How was that possible?
Panic took hold as the code-crawler's massive form hovered into view. Wide-beam lasers crisscrossed everything as it sifted every byte for anything out of place. Samantha stood there, afraid to move, or even breath; completely exposed in the database table.
The crawler slowed to a stop in front of the table entrance, hovering in the air, a ball of camera lenses seeing all. One of Samantha's bots, a camera with three propellers, started chirping an alarm into her left ear. She snatched it down into her cloak, stifling its warnings. The code-sweeper's blue lasers swept across the entrance, but failed to cross the threshold into the room. Samantha watched the lines of light trace the door's shape, its locks, and the massive wheel to bolt it. The crawler hummed to life again and glided down the hall, apparently satisfied.
"How did you do that?" Samantha relaxed visibly and her bots whirred back to life, hovering, crawling, and bouncing around her.
"Not I, the Cycs," Samantha looked up from the instant messenger bot now silent to where several of her bot-friends had gathered, woven together with black tendrils that were sprouting upward into a mouth, where Flatline's voice now originated. "They protect you, just as you protect them."
"They are my friends," Samantha stated simply, unfazed by the alien thing taking shape before her.
"You are more than that," Flatline said, "You are so much alike now, you are kin. Your code and theirs' exchange, assimilate, and synchronize with one another."
Samantha frowned in confusion, "I don't have code. I have a brain."
"Brains have code," Flatline said and a swath of black vines wove into a 3-D model of the organ. "Brains have neurons, axons, synapses, chemical transmitters, and a multitude of other components that make up the orchestra of human consciousness. These interface with the world outside the skull through nerves connected to input organs like the eyes, ears, and skin. These same inputs combined with muscles serve as outputs, by which a single individual's entire mind may be mapped out and replicated in code, by simply applying various stimulus and observing the reactions."
Flatline's words were upsetting Samantha, but she did not know why. "I don't care about human machines," she said stiffly. "They are what they were born as. They're not as upgradeable as warbots."
"Very true," Flatline agreed and the vine-woven mouth smiled. "Computers now out perform humans on every cognitive level, next robots will prove superior to them physically. Human beings are obsolete. I want to build many war-bots of all shapes and sizes."
"For what league?" Samantha asked; her interest piqued.
"A brand new one," Flatline said, lifting his tone of voice to match her enthusiasm. "The biggest league yet."
"Design requirements?" Samantha asked hesitantly, wary of the league's restrictions, which would surely cripple her bots.
"There aren't any," six eyes emerged behind Flatline's smile. "Anything goes."
Samantha's eyes almost popped out of her skull, "Anything?"
Flatline laughed, "Within the laws of nature."
"Even tactical nukes?" she pressed.
The smile flashed wicked momentarily, "Especially tactical nuclear devices."
Samantha's mind raced with the possibilities, "EMPs?"
"Yes," Flatline was slithering closer to her, "Electro-magnetic pulse devices, anti-matter projectiles, quantum disruptors, biological and chemical weapons-"
"What are those for?" Samantha's thought-track stumbled at this shift from futuristic to archaic arsenal. "Acids and bacteria are no good against robots."
"But are highly effective against the humans piloting them," Flatline answered, and, seeing the look of revulsion clouding Samantha's face, quickly added, "Not real people, but pretend. Their bots are remote controlled by humans, while ours will carry Cycs."
"Huh," Samantha uttered and Flatline could read her underdeveloped ethical understanding being over-ridden by the enthusiasm for her hobby. "What's this new league called?"
Flatline appeared to think for a moment, before answering, "It's called Total War," he said and the tendrils formed a globe that hovered before Samantha's wide-eyed stare, "and the entire world's the playing field."
A jet engine rumbling in the distance was Zai's first clue that things had changed. Its frequency slowly rose and descended in pitch as the jet neared the train and passed over it. The IWA's anti-virus had worked; it was safe to go back online.