Chapter 46
"I've got it," Brooke said.
"Let's see it," Adam demanded.
"Are you ready to take this thing offline for good?"
"The worm isn’t ready yet.”
“Worm?” I asked.
“In hindsight, we should have taken it down sooner, when it was easier.” Then he added, “We should never have built this thing, but I thought…
I thought this would be a way to end the possibility of nuclear annihilation.
" He shook his head. "Instead, we just created another avenue for mass destruction.”
Adam hung his head in shame.
"I'll be right back," Brooke said, ambling down the hallway to a restroom.
"Have you been here the whole time since your disappearance?" I asked.
Adam nodded. "I've got more than enough food, water, and supplies to last for several years." He paused. "The writing was on the wall. Scott was eliminating the team." He shook his head. "I can't believe I ever trusted that guy.”
"Is this a black budget project? Who is he working with?"
"I assumed when I first came on board that this was a Department of Defense project. CIA. NSA. Homeland. That kind of thing." He shook his head. "Then I realized why Scott was really building this.”
"Why is that?”
"I don’t know how well you know Scott, but he’s got a bit of a God complex.”
“I gathered.”
“Scott thinks he’s saving the world. He thinks the government is broken beyond repair, and we need to start over.
The guy’s worth almost a trillion dollars.
He’s building his own private army. He thinks he can control the drone network.
He's deluding himself. With Sentinel, he thinks he will be able to control the world. And he might, for a time. Sentinel is so capable, nothing stands a chance against it. It can knock planes out of the sky. Missiles as they come out of launch tubes. This is unlike anything in existence. But it will be Sentinel that is in control. Not Scott.”
Brooke returned a moment later and handed a small thumb drive to Adam. She looked at me and said, "Don't ask."
It didn't take a genius to figure out where she had hidden the hardware key.
Adam took the drive and sat at the laptop that was connected to a large display.
"You’re running this bunker on solar," I said.
"There's plenty of sun around here, and I've got a backup generator if need be. Plus battery packs that stay topped off. I've got a satellite uplink, and I’ve hacked into all the streaming platforms, so I get free movies. Which is nice."
He tapped a few keys at a terminal prompt. The cursor flashed. "We have to spoof an authorized terminal port to upload anything to the network. I’ve cloned my terminal at Meridian.”
He tapped a few more keys, entered login credentials, and was inside the system. He inserted both HSMs into USB ports simultaneously. With the two keys, he could now update the system, theoretically.
"I have root-level access. But like I told you, the system won’t accept shutdown commands.
I can't just delete everything. There are redundancies, and the AI will just rebuild itself. If I start deleting files, Sentinel will identify the threat and lock me out. It won’t matter what my credentials are. ”
“So how are you going to get around that?” I asked.
“It’s what I’ve been working on and testing for the last several months.
It’s why I told Brooke to stay off grid and away from here until I contacted her,” he said with an annoyed glance.
“Having two HSMs in the same place is dangerous. This should only happen when everything is ready to take the system down.”
“Now seems like a good time,” I said in a sardonic voice.
“The worm isn’t ready. It needs more testing. We only have one shot at this.”
“We don’t have time for more testing,” Brooke said.
“How exactly does this worm work?“ I asked.
“Well, in theory, it will inject corrupt telemetry that will cause the consensus algorithm to fracture across nodes.”
“Oh, sure,” I mocked like I understood. “How about in English?”
“The worm will insert corrupt data. The AI will try to self-correct, but it will do so with garbage because the worm has overwritten its core module. Basically, the worm is going to make it think there was a problem, and the AI is going to fix a problem that doesn’t exist, thereby compromising itself. “
“How long will this take to initiate?”
“I can upload the worm in a matter of seconds, then it will slowly start injecting the corrupt data.” Adam shrugged. “With any luck, the system will be totally corrupt within 5 to 10 minutes.”
“What will happen to the drones swarm?”
“They will return to base,” he said in an uncertain tone.
“So what’s the problem with the worm?”
An alarm sounded. A security cam zoomed in on three helicopters as they approached the bunker.
Adam’s face tightened, and he grumbled, “I told you, you were tracked.”