The Words

Sufficiently Informed

The military knew more than they'd initially been willing to say about the current situation, telling me no more than the minimum necessary for me to be 'sufficiently' informed. While I wasted precious time attempting to pry enough from them to be somewhat better informed, if nowhere near sufficiently. And without their own 'Top Secret' instance of Virtuality safely online, it was clear that I would never get all the clearances required to be candidly informed.

In a desperate act of pragmatism, one of the generals finally admitted: The essence of the issue was that a 'Malicious AI Entity' escaped from one of their VR Isolation Chambers. So, they'd been experimentally breeding nasty AI entities to use in the event of all-out cyber warfare. This was never intended to be used or known to the outside world, which was hardly a new theme. It was the same story as the research in germ, chemical, and nuclear warfare that had preceded it.

These VR Isolation Chambers, he explained, were high-end standalone workstations that had, supposedly, never been connected to external systems or networks, ever. But the very fact of the existence of a 'Malicious AI Entity' led to a heated exchange between me and several of the military personnel present, including the general who'd just informed me far more 'sufficiently.' It was of the "YOU STUPID ASS MORONS. WHAT THE FUCK WERE YOU THINKING?" variety of discussions, all bold caps, with fingers, pointed or flipped, flying in every direction.

I should have known better from experience, but my initial supposition, when first hearing of these VR Isolation Chambers was that they would be massive and impressive pieces of hardware. But, once I'd been escorted through the 'Top Secret' warehouse-sized data center, I found that the problem appeared to have originated within a thin, rack-mounted piece of electronics less than an inch thick. There was nothing to distinguish it from the other thousands of units stacked in row after row of identical racks in any of the vast server farms that hosted Virtuality or its 'Top Secret Instances' hosted there. But, as with all those units, the box we were considering, based on the standards of my youth, had the equivalent power of these same server farms filled with those earlier computers.

The VR Isolation Chambers, there were dozens apparently, were each mounted in isolated racks rather than locked into the quantum bus interconnecting all the other units in the facility. They assured me the responsible unit's rack never had physical contact with any other racks. It was enveloped in shielding to block any electromagnetic waves originating internally from escaping or those with external origins getting in. The only thing connected to these units was a single, hardwired device that appeared much like an old tuning fork. I immediately recognized these for what they were, even though it had been more than two centuries since I'd seen any form of Magick Hat connected directly to a system with a cable.

So, as it sat, there was no way for the unit to communicate with anything in the outside world; not so much as a short-range, wireless connection to a conventional Magick Hat, for fear it might provide what lived there a path to escape. And those present were clearly all desperately afraid of whatever they'd bred there. But, despite their precautions, it had somehow managed to escape and wasn't just wreaking havoc in the virtual world; cars were crashing, people were crazy and violent, and those were only what I was already aware. I knew there had been deaths and would be more.

I felt chilled by the possibilities of what else might be yet to come. They'd only wanted the ability to incapacitate the networks and computers of any of the other governments. Instead, they'd unleashed the Godzilla of the computer science world, with human lives every bit as endangered. And the cause was the same: Human arrogance and stupidity. That it hadn't been my arrogance and stupidity alone didn't much matter. There'd been volumes of science fiction written about the bad things the authors feared were bound to occur: The end of humankind, machines eradicating our species. There were seminars and conventions held worldwide to discuss the potential benefits, but mostly the dangers, of artificial intelligence.