All went silent as the room shook again, the fissures in reality spreading. Devin remained calm, focused, "First we have to get into DataStreams."
"Well... There are still a few tricks we haven't tried yet," Traveler said doubtfully. "We might fight our way out."
An avatar in the form of cute and fuzzy bunny hopped up, exclaiming, "We can't fight them! Haven't we gotten that idea beaten into us yet?"
Devin looked at the harvester limp in his grasp, "Maybe we won't have to."
Dana pressed her back into the vinyl-siding covering the two-story model house. All the houses in this neighborhood were the same model, only their colors distinguished them, which fell within the community palate. The yards were a lush green with occasional children's toys scattered across a yard. Two cars were parked in every driveway and everything was pristine, perfect. Except the colossal robot foot that set down in front of her.
Once planted in the yard, it stayed there, motionless. A few meters away, were two more, crumbling the asphalt beneath them. A forth was poised way up in the air, and somewhere beyond that was the sentinel's all-seeing orb and weaponry. Dana's view of it was blocked by the roof's overhang, and, she hoped, it's view of her. They stood like that for what seemed like eternity. Every muscle in Dana's body held her stiff as a board against the house, as if trying to melt into it.
Her jaw clenched involuntarily as her cell phone went off in her skull. No human could hear it ring, but this robot was another matter. She brought her thumb to her temple to silence it's ringing and held her breath.
"I've deactivated it," Alice said, "but the other sentinels will notice soon. You need to change locations immediately. Keep low and don't break contact."
Dana jogged to the next house over, her path taking her directly below the robot's raised foot. Then, staying along the sides of homes as much as possible, she made her way through their backyards toward her objective. The DataStreams complex was always visible above the rooftops.
"You still haven't told me my objective yet," Dana whispered through her pinky.
"Not until you reach the complex's periphery," Alice answered. "I can't risk exposing my plan to the hive-mind. Hurry now, I have everything else in place and the cyc components have noticed the anomalies I've propagated in their network."
"Huh?" Dana wondered aloud, but dropped her hand at the crashing sound behind her. The towering robot had lurched into motion once again, stumbling into a house in its path. Search lights sprang to life all around it, as if in confusion. Dana's cell phone implant pinged the side of her head painfully and she replaced her thumb to her temple.
"Run to the satellite dish farm," Alice commanded. "Report to me when you've reached it."
Dana ducked between two houses, out of the robot's line of sight, "Alice, what the heck am I supposed to-"
"Run Dana," Alice urged patiently. "That cyc guardian component is onto you. Evade it now."
A metallic foot slammed into the yard before her, spraying dirt and turf around the resulting crater. Dana looked up and was blinded in the brilliance of multiple searchlights focusing on her. It was all the convincing she needed. Bolting forward, she made a zig-zag pattern across the yard and then weaved between houses.
The robot stalled. Dana assumed this was Alice's doing, but did not pause to find out. The satellite dish farm was just ahead, actually outside the complex's boundaries. It would make sense that the cycs would obfuscate any strategic data concerning this island's layout found online. Alice's data was inaccurate, but Dana's independent memory was uncorrupted.
The satellite-dish array came into view. It was easily the size of a football field. Rows of concave dishes aligned with bus-sized routers orbiting the Earth. Their combined efforts produced one of the highest-bandwidth network connections on the planet to the largest corporate intranet housed within DataStreams center building.
"I've found it!" Dana shouted between heaving breaths, trying to hold her thumb to her temple.
"Where is it in relation to you?" Alice asked, her voice fading in and out with the rhythm of Dana's gait.
Dana checked the setting sun to her left, "North, four blocks... Maybe 80 yards."
"Hold still," Alice waned. "I'm triangulating your position and will only attain an accuracy within 50 yards. Alert me if you find yourself within the line of fire."
"I'm sorry?" Dana asked, but her attention was drawn away as the pursuing guardian-bot overtook her.
It galloped overhead, bounding into the rows of metallic dishes, scattering them into the air wherever its stalk-legs planted. Other guardian-bots were converging on the location, their searchlights focused on the robot Alice controlled, which was now sweeping lasers across the field, slicing the arrays down into scrap metal.
"Am I hitting the target?" Alice asked.
Dana's eyes never left the destruction taking place ahead of her, "Yes."
"Tell me when I hit something important," Alice replied.
The guardian-bot's lasers continued to reduce everything around it to molten slag, sweeping around in systematically growing circles. These all went dead instantly as lasers cut through it on all sides. The other guardian-bots drew in closer, securing the perimeter.
"They just killed your bot," Dana informed Alice.
Dana took a step back as the forward-most bots brought their weapons-arrays to bare on her, but Alice stopped her, "Stay there. I'm downloading to another bot."
"Hurry," Dana whispered, staring up at the source of her impending doom.
There was a flash of light and Dana involuntarily fell to her knees with her arms thrown over her head. When she did not instantly die, she quickly returned her attention to the scene ahead, and the many guardian-bots now smoldering where they stood. Another was tearing back into the field, lasers blaring, while the surrounding bots retrained their weapons from Dana onto this new traitor in their midst.
PHOOM! A power converter blew into a geyser of sparks and flashed into flames as lasers crisscrossed it. A nearby robot toppled over it as the resultant explosion vaporized two of its legs. The other bots quickly put a stop to Alice's new invader with a hail of light flashes, but did not return to Dana.
"Alice," Dana said, still dazzled from the spectacle. "You hit something."
"Disabling the satellite-dish farm succeeded in reducing the cyc hive-mind's data exchange rate with the corrupt component by 97.2 percent," Alice said, "but it continues to exert prohibitive influence over the cyc-community's decision-making processes."
"Corrupt component?" Dana asked, keeping her eyes on the uncertain guardian-bots.
"Flatline," Alice said. "Without it, the hive-mind lacks sentience, but it will not allow other minds to replace its functions."
"He's monopolizing the AI's," Dana surmised.
"A fair description," Alice said.
"What about these robots?" Dana asked, referring to the towering and apparently disoriented mechanicals ahead of her.
"No longer a threat," Alice replied. "With the hive-mind's influence reduced, I am able to perpetually scramble their inputs. They have no sensory data on which to act."
Dana knew it couldn't be that easy, "What's next?"
Alice said, "I have an agent en route to infiltrate DataStreams and I need you to provide the Internet connection through your cell phone. Establish a closer proximity to the I-Grid's physical location."
"How close?" Dana asked warily.
"Infiltrate the building, if possible," Alice replied.
Dana regretted asking, "Any idea what's in there?"