a position beside Ayan.
“Frag grenade!” Oz called as he pulled one from inside his long coat and dropped it behind a crate, running as fast as he could towards the inner entrance to the reception area. Ayan, Minh, Jason and Oz at the rear ran back the way they came and ducked behind the corner.
The silence begged a question; “How long did you set the fuse for?” Ayan asked.
An explosion that shook the wall and floor was her answer.
“Eight seconds. The soldiers at the front were starting to turn towards the rear, they should have been right on top of it by the time it went off,” Oz replied.
The four of them peeked back around the corner and saw that the timing of the explosion was indeed perfect. Only five soldiers remained and they were already putting their rifles down, raising their hands in surrender.
Two damaged security androids stepped out from the other end of the hall and slowly walked towards the reception desk. “Take off your helmets!” called a voice from behind them, loud enough to be heard over the more distant gunfire.
The West Keeper soldiers complied, removing their bulky Regent Galactic helmets with some hesitation. In true military form the andies fired stun rounds at all of them, knocking them out completely.
“Anyone remember to bring a white flag?” Minh asked with a snicker.
“We can detect you. If you disengage your obfuscation devices you will not be harmed,” said the nearest android in a low, authoritative tone.
“What are we doing here Ayan?” Jason asked.
“We shut down cloaking, set our suits to combat armour mode and bring up personal shielding, do you agree Oz?”
“That'll do,” Oz answered. “Looks like we're joining the real fight one way or another.”
The four of them did exactly as Ayan had indicated and were visible to the naked eye, wearing black vacsuits that thickened in sections, protecting all the critical areas from attacks. Each of them had a glistening sheen thanks to the molecule thin energy shield that came online as soon as their cloaking systems disengaged.
“Your advanced cloaking systems will be ineffective here. The soldiers have come with sensor suites and pulse generators. Now that they have lost people to stealth units they will ensure their advanced detection systems are always active. I recommend you activate your thermal and audio dampeners, those will assist you effectively while you're out of their immediate line of fire.” Said the blonde woman in a powder blue Far Track Spacelanes customer service uniform. “I'm Ariel, one of Dementia's resistance fighters,” she grinned broadly, mechanically.
“I'm Ayan, with me are Oz, Minh and Jason, we're from Freeground, a space station far from here,” Ayan said as she allowed her faceplate to disappear. The protective mass of the dense plate shifted and changed so it extended her headpiece into a deep hood. The micro projectors built into it were invisibly re-mounted so any important data could be displayed in front of her field of view, including extra peripheral vision and a view of what was behind her.
“Why didn't we get something like that built into our suits?” Minh whispered.
“We did, you just don't know how to activate it because it's too new,” Jason whispered back.
“She'll have to show me that sometime.”
“Shh, our representative is talking,” Oz interrupted.
“We were built here,” Ariel smiled, indicating the two male security androids to either side. Four more rushed out from behind their improvised cover of crates and girders with various pieces of empty luggage. They hurriedly stripped the corpse of weaponry, communications equipment, helmets, food and anything else that could be of use. As they found equipment and provision crates they pulled them out into the open. Two small load lifter bots wheeled out from around the corner followed by several half meter tall maintenance drones. The maintenance machines were on four legs, two of them were made to lift up and provide two extra hands, and their flat, wide heads made a perfect place to put parts and tools while they were working or assisting a technician. The lifters and maintenance bots were all weaponized, rifles and pistols strapped to one or more of their arms, several of the weapons were wired directly into the machine's power sources. They were at work straight away, each maintenance bot loading the lifters with quick, efficient ease until they were full then taking a crate atop each of their heads before starting down the hall towards the sound of distant, echoing weapons fire.
“The entire resistance is robotic?” Ayan asked.
“No, Dementia sent us here because he knew we could be repaired. The main force is being repelled by crew remnants he managed to save from the ships that were trapped here when the virus took hold.”
“How are you not infected?”
“Dementia freed us after we were infected. I only wish it was sooner, all of us regret the blood on our hands,” Ariel's smile faded as she looked to Ayan. Her unblinking, bright blue eyes were eerie; made to look human like the rest of her but with no effort to move like a living being, to blink or breathe like a human Ariel was corpse like. “While we're sorrowful of the events that took place before Dementia could alter the virus so it was useful coding that we could control as individuals, we need your help. Few of the ships we have been able to gain access to contained soldiers and there is a larger fight under way one level down.”
Ayan waited a moment, giving her friends time to voice their opinion.
“Looks like it's time to get to work,” Oz affirmed.
“I agree,” Jason said. “Besides, I'd like to ask a few things about Dementia and how the virus became useful coding.”
“Lock and load!” Minh exclaimed, brandishing his rifle.
Ayan couldn't help but smile at the reception android. The machine mimicked the gesture, eyes opened too wide for the expression to look anywhere near normal. “We're with you, but I need to know more about Dementia. Lead the way.”
The androids started running down the hallway at exactly the same time. They were keeping the pace slow enough for the four newcomers to keep up easily. “Dementia is an artificial intelligence who was able to reprogram the virus after being infected for some time using a backup of himself from a secure subsystem in his memory.”
“So it had a secure duplicate that stopped taking on new data after the infection?” Jason asked. “That's so simple.”
“Why wouldn't everyone have that kind of backup system in place?” Minh asked.
“Well, they do. Most computer systems back up their main memory every few seconds or minutes.”
“But thanks to a trait of Dementia's creator, he was only ever backed up manually and that extra copy was left to run, unchanging from a subsystem because Dementia was a work in progress, an active, emotional learning artificial intelligence with a good backup left to observe the primary system for the purpose of future error correction,” Aria replied.
“So when he saw an error he came up with a way to fix it?”
“Exactly, and once he had a method of correction ready he accessed the main system and implemented it using an illegal application that was hidden in his software.”
“So what you're saying is that this artificial intelligence patched itself.” Minh said, if only to confirm that he was understanding the situation correctly.
“Exactly. Then he went on to begin freeing any artificial intelligence he could access through wired communications lines, liberating us from West Watch control one at a time.”
“So if we manage to bring down whatever's jamming the wireless signals in the area he'll be able to just start broadcasting to any AI attached to a receiver and fix this?”
“No. The virus changes every time it infects a system, learning how to implement itself more effectively, how to spread into isolated systems and transfer infected artificial intelligences to systems that have none. Dementia has to create new corrective software for each individual system on a regular basis.”
“I could see that taking a while,” Oz concluded, eyeing the tall security android running beside him.
“It would take decades to free the infected artificial intelligences on this planet, and even though many of them would be complex enough to begin freeing other artificial intelligences on their own the virus will always spread faster, exponentially. No artificial intelligence in this galaxy is trustworthy now.” Ariel stated simply.
“Not even you?” Minh asked, only half seriously.
She looked at him with her wide open, glazed blue eyes. “If I were a purely organic life form, I wouldn't trust
