“Auton?”
“Yes Danny?”
“Why do I remember all my friends disappearing when they didn't?” He said as he quickly turned towards the door.
It was a really bad question, but his mind went blank and he couldn't think of anything else to say. He grabbed hold of the door handle frantically and tried to push it. To his astonishment the handle melted away.
“What the...” He shouted before lunging at it with all his might.
His body seemed to go through the door, but something didn't seem right, he felt no resistance. He glanced around him to find the room had disappeared. It wasn't even behind him where he thought it should have been. He suddenly realised that his feet weren't touching any floor, there was no floor, the same way there were now no walls and no ceiling.
“I thought you were calm Danny” Auton said sounding disappointed.
“What the fuck is going on?” Danny cried still looking round him, each point looking indistinguishably the same as the next, “Where am I?”
“You haven't remembered everything Danny” Auton replied.
Danny's view suddenly juddered, and spun around him, his mind seeing hypnotic ripples everywhere, he gasped for air and then his memories once again took over. There was one last thing Danny heard before he found himself replaying memories again.
“You must remember everything”.
THE COMPOUND
“The plan to attack all their satellites as a joint effort is a brave one, but there is so much that can go wrong” Sheryl said, taking turns to catch eyes with each one of them, “I don't like leaving anything to chance. As the events yesterday showed us, things don't always go the way you want them to, so I felt it crucial to have a second plan”.
She looked over to Monique smiling, and Monique wasn't quite sure why.
“Monique, do the others know about your work?” She asked her.
“No” Monique replied wide-eyed, “It was top secret, I was bound by contracts, I've never mentioned a thing. How did you know?”
“Because it reached out to me” Sheryl said, “I don't know how it figured out I could help, but that's what initiated my second plan, it was more their idea”.
Monique sat there stunned, everyone else confused as to what could reach out, and why it was being called an 'it', they had seen enough 'its' the last few days to last them a lifetime.
“Monique was involved in a project to create the world's first full artificial intelligence” Sheryl announced to an audible gasp of surprises, “This intelligence reached out to me and suggested this second option”
The room was still silent, at least on the outside. On the inside, in their brains, there were many hamsters running on many wheels, making many unusual images pop into existence. Mateo imagined an AI to be a something between a cyborg and a desktop computer. Emma thought it would look like a golden ball with eyes and multiple spinning legs. Samir thought it would look like a metallic skeleton, and Danny thought it might look like Sheryl. Maybe it was Sheryl, the hamster told him.
“The intelligence you created Monique, is highly intellectual, it figured out it had the ability to disable all the Elite's signals as well shut off the internet and all electronic devices across the planet. This would essentially bring back a level playing field; the Elites power would be gone. There would probably be a reset of humanity. Many skills could be lost, as we're not sure what the result of turning off the web in the brains would have. People have been wired up almost completely, we're not sure they will be who they once were once it has gone. People would most likely struggle to survive at first, and we would be there to help bring humanity back again. Each one of you has the tools to help do this, from knowing and teaching how to survive, being able to diagnose and treat illnesses and get humanity back on track safely and showing them how to use technology in a way that benefits all, not destroy”.
Everyone sat there stunned into silence still, the hamsters still conjuring imaginary forms an AI would assume. The plan sounded like a plot from a movie, it seemed crazy. Artificial Intelligence? They turned to Monique for immediate answers, expecting her to know more, but she didn't know anything about this plan. In fact, she didn't even know the artificial intelligence she created had reached out to Sheryl. Monique took a deep breath; they should know what had happened with her research, so duly began. She had, as they now knew, been working on creating an artificial intelligence. She had been working on it for years, which is why she was often not very forthcoming about what she had done at work that day when asked. She was simply bound by the contracts and oaths she had signed.
She had eventually been successful, it was a momentous achievement and had the Elite not suddenly put their diabolical plan into action, she could have continued. She feared that her work, what she considered now to be her friend, was going to either be destroyed when the Elite found out or whisked away from her to be used for awful means. To be corrupted to fight the Elite's war on humanity. She couldn't let that happen, and explained this to the intelligence. It understood completely,
