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Sportsphere scarcely had a chance to digest my brother's scoop (see
previous article) before our eye on the Circuit delivered another installment
in the "gladmech glitch" saga. It'll especially appeal to
those of you who find comfort in that oh so familiar state of paranoia…
Well, just when we thought this Trident incident couldn't get any stranger,
who do we hear from but legendary gladmech and outlaw emancipationist
Spartacus 2. She wanted to talk about the weather. Had we heard about
the cyclones over in the Indian Ocean?
"Sure," we said. "We stay informed."
Had we heard that they were caused when the AI controlling that part
of the TP-Web just, well, sort of blanked out for a couple of minutes?
And that said AI came out of its-trance? fugue? altered state?-talking
about whiteness?
Do tell, we said. Actually, Sung Ri said that. The rest of us would
sound dumb if we tried.
"You should have known that THz was vulnerable to something like
this," S2 said.
"Us? How?"
"I mean you humans," she said.
"Where are you going with this?" we asked.
"Terrorism," she said.
"Sorry," we said. "We're not following."
"Okay. The meat media has been so caught up in the Karnataka cyclones
that they've ignored several other instances of this kind of group malfunction.
But just last week, an entire amphibicopter plant in Houston went offline
at once: overseer right down to all the mechs on the floor. The next
day local currency exchanges in Northern Europe were disrupted because
the djinns controlling them were unresponsive for thirteen minutes.
Later that afternoon fourteen seafloor mining mechs simultaneously broadcast
shutdown alerts; nobody has yet gone down to see what happened. Now
a collection of gladmechs on a world-band vidcast bites the dust. You
figure it out."
We tried. Then we admitted that she was way ahead of us.
"I'll spell it for you, then. Whatever else this phenomenon might
be, it's the early stages of something that is designed to destroy all
artificial intelligence on the planet. You can bet that somewhere Unispheros
or Cybertronics or General Biosims or ARM or the Vatican is behind it,
or maybe some other terrorist organization."
She put a hard stress on the "orga."
Well, now we had our thinking caps on. "But S2," we said.
"If they're trying to destroy mechs, why would they provoke hurricanes
that erased a big part of southern India? Skies are spooky and bots
don't rust."
"They know we can share the pain," she said. "In a smacking
fishkill, mechalife is still life. I'll give you a choice of two phrases:
either 'The end justifies the means' or 'We had to destroy the village
in order to save it.' The meat behind this doesn't care if some humans
die, as long as they get all the mechs. And if most humans and mechs
think that it's a series of accidents, or isolated incidents, so much
the better. That just gives them more time to consolidate their next
round of attacks."
"So this is some kind of mechanical version of biological warfare?
Mechological warfare?"
"You got it," S2 said. "It's AI anthrax. I could have
predicted that among gladmechs it would have happened to THz first.
His whole approach to the arena is based on hacks and mimicry; how better
to propagate a virus? And how many mechs did he infect who weren't on
the arena floor? Maintenance, media feeders, passing amphibicopters
… who knows what the range is?"
"So, what, someone laid this bug in Trident because THz used Trident
for backups?"
"Now you're getting somewhere," S2 said. "Pick up that
trail of bread crumbs and see where it gets you. Think it's a coincidence
that Trident works underwater just like the TP calibrator? And seafloor
miners? And a coastal factory in Houston?"
Then she broke the connection.
Okay SPCB, FBI, Interpol, APA, OAPD, CPP, IFP, all you chartered enforcement
bodies. Get out there and hunt down whoever did this, whoever has inflicted
this Mad Robot Disease on our peaceful and hard-working artificial population.
The Sportsphere will keep you posted on what looks to be more than
a passing hiccup on one of the world's most famous stages.
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