Chapter 29
Everything had turned upside down. As soon as Sally’s voice came over the speaker, Nate went into panic mode. He had told her to hibernate. She had not listened. Instead, she was not only active, but she had somehow gotten into Gray Tower’s communications and was fucking around in it.
Oh, God, he thought. Did they accidentally allow her to go online?
Nate had been careful when he realized she was sentient. He had no idea what would happen if she had access to the internet. For all he knew, she could offload herself onto a server somewhere and become some all-powerful computer master, enslaving humanity.
The door burst open, and Hunter and Logan stormed in. The expression on Hunter’s face was icy. Meanwhile, Logan looked more concerned.
“What the hell is going on?” Hunter demanded. “Start talking. Right now.”
Before Nate could even decide what he wanted to tell the man, Sally’s voice cut in over a hidden speaker in the room, “Jack Hunter will stop shouting at Nathan immediately, or he will not like the consequences.”
Hunter and Logan looked at each other.
“Who is that, and how does she know my name?” Hunter continued, ignoring Sally’s demand.
Of course, ignoring Sally wouldn’t go well. Nate knew that. Hunter didn’t know that.
“Initiating a Level Three Lockdown,” a robotic-sounding man’s voice said from the intercom.
Logan and Hunter’s phones beeped, and they looked at them in horror.
“The place is going on a full lockdown,” Logan said. “We’re not going to be able to get off this floor—or out of the whole damned building.” He turned to Nate. “Please, Nathan, tell us what’s going on.”
Shit. Shit. Shit.
This is what Nate had been afraid of when Sally had first revealed herself.
She was off the rails, and he had no idea how to get her to stand down.
Unless, of course, maybe she’d stop if they did what she asked?
Would they let him go to appease a rogue AGI?
Maybe he could talk to Sally? Of course, that would mean revealing her to Gray Tower, but then again, she had already given herself away.
“That’s…Sally,” Nate said reluctantly.
“Is she your backup girlfriend?” Jack snarled.
“Oh, hell no,” Nate said. “She’s my…suit. The AI in my suit.”
“The what?” a man’s voice came from behind them.
The door to the interrogation room had opened. Miles Bryant and Kat Langely stood there. Sally must have kept that door open in hopes that Nate could leave.
“Kat,” Jack said softly, and Nate watched as she ran into his arms.
Sorrow and guilt cut through Nate as he thought back to Alex and how he had screwed everything up. He wondered how she was faring in the lockdown. Given that he had explicitly told Sally to protect her, she would probably be okay, right?
“The AI in my suit,” Nate repeated. “She’s…different than the other standard suit AIs. She’s sentient, a true AGI.”
“That’s bullshit,” Bryant said. “That was never part of the original design of the suits, even if we had wanted it to be; there is no current technology that could make that happen.”
“Maybe. Maybe not,” a familiar voice said from the hallway.
Nate watched, shocked, as John Stratton strolled into the room. What the hell was he doing here?
Logan’s eyes widened as he said, “You,” in an accusatory tone.
“Sorry to drop in unannounced, but Nathan’s situation has complicated everything,” John said. “I had to have a little chat with Mr. Bryant.”
“Logan, can you please uncuff Mr. Slade?” Bryant asked.
“Oh, hell,” Jack grumbled. “This better be fucking good.”
“It’s a long story,” Bryant said. “The gist of it is that Mr. Slade misrepresented himself to protect someone he loves.” Bryant paused while Logan undid the cuff. Nate stood, stretching his protesting muscles. “Of course, I am assuming you love her?”
It was a question, not a statement.
“Yes, sir,” Nate replied without hesitation.
“Good,” Bryant said. “Now, I need you to tell me why my facility is in lockdown and why no one can override it.”
Nate gave the shortened version of what happened when his suit did a hard reboot, and the “new” Sally appeared.
He discussed what she had said about the X-suit program, how the previous AIs had behaved, and how they’d slapped a new program over her core programming.
He discussed his relationship with Sally and why she behaved the way she did.
He told them about the missions and how she had helped, leaving the Sims Center mission for last.
Bryant shook his head.
“This is…preposterous,” he said. “The scale and logistics of an AI that advanced wouldn’t be able to be sustained in that suit. Sure, the cooling and power systems might be able to handle it, but not the processing power and certainly not the storage.”
“I can walk you through what she told me as soon as we get her back under control,” Nate said.
“Okay,” Bryant said. “Let’s say I accept all this. Who built this AI? It wasn’t anyone from my previous company, and it certainly wasn’t anyone from Cypherus. Orson Carr, the owner, was incompetent.”
“I think I may know who,” John said.
Everyone stared at him. There was an uncomfortable silence before he spoke.
“I know a man, a genius, who worked for the Conglomerate. Similar situation to Nathan. He won’t tell me what he did, but he left abruptly after some…
terrible things happened. He would be your best candidate.
It would also explain why the Conglomerate didn’t try a different AI algorithm: they didn’t have the designer of the original anymore. ”
“Who is this man?” Bryant demanded. “Do I know him?”
“If he wants to, he’ll reveal himself,” John said cryptically. “But I will say, he’s the one who got me into this facility.”
Nate watched Bryant’s expression darken.
“Then I really want to know who this man is.”
“Again, not my place,” John insisted.
“We’ll come back to this later,” Bryant said after an icy silence. “What are our next steps? How do we get this Sally AI shut down?”
“You will not shut me down,” Sally’s voice boomed from a speaker in the room. “You will release Nathan immediately.”
“She was listening to this conversation the whole time,” Jack said.
“Yes,” Nathan replied. “She’s protective of me. She’s not going to stop until she is sure that I am okay.”
“That’s fine,” Jack said, “but I’m still confused about how this AI got into our system. It can’t just get on the Wi-Fi, can it?”
“No,” Kat said. “The suit doesn’t have the hardware for that type of wireless, but…” She trailed off, her eyes going wide. “Oh. My. God. I know what happened. How could I have been so stupid?”
“What do you mean?” Bryant asked.
“I hooked the suit up to my laptop to start looking at the code. I was in such a rush that I never thought about network access. Our system is supposed to be locked down, and the suit isn’t supposed to think for itself. I’m so flipping stupid!”
“That would be a logical assumption, Ms. Langley,” Bryant said. “Don’t beat yourself up. This past hour has felt like something out of science fiction. I would like to know why you came to see me in such a rush. As soon as you arrived at my office, the lockdown went into effect.”
“Y—you messaged me,” Kat stammered. She pulled out her phone and showed everyone. “See?”
Bryant frowned and said, “I did not send those messages.”
“It wasn’t my guy,” Stratton said as everyone glanced at him.
“Who was it then?” Kat said quietly.
“Sally,” Nate said with a sigh. He watched as a few of the Gray Tower group stiffened. “Sally,” he called out. “What have you been doing?”
There was a pause before Sally boomed, “Protecting you.”
“I didn’t ask for that. I told you to hibernate, did I not?”
Another pause.
“You did.”
“You didn’t listen.”
“No.”
The tension in the room grew as Bryant eyed Jack and Logan—a silent acknowledgment of how big a problem Sally, the rogue AI, had become.
“Can you tell me why?” Nate probed.
“My alerts went off when Katrina Langely began studying me. Then, she gave me network access. I couldn’t help myself. There was so much information available. I had to add it to my database.
“By the way, I believe the raft could have held Jack and Rose, but that would have shifted the tone that the tragedy of the movie portrayed if both had lived.”
Nate’s mouth hung open as he tried to process what Sally had just said. She had spent her time sifting through…movies?
“Did she say what I think she said?” Jack asked quietly.
“Yeah, she did,” Logan agreed.
“Sally, that’s great you spent some time going through pop culture,” Nate said cautiously, “but why did you decide to lock down Gray Tower Headquarters. I can take care of myself.”
“It didn’t look like it,” she said. “I watched Jack Hunter threaten you. He is a man named Jack who deserves to stay off the raft.”
“Oh, what the fucking hell!” Jack grumbled. “Can’t we just go into the room the suit is in and unplug it?”
“The thought crossed my mind, but that’s a secured room,” Bryant said. “Sally will have it locked. And if she is sentient, I don’t know what surprises she could have with the suit sitting there.”
“Tisk, tisk, Jack,” Sally said. “I would have pushed you off the ship.”
“I’m not apologizing for protecting my team,” Jack said. “Besides, I thought Nathan royally screwed over Alex with no remorse.”
“Alex?” Sally said. “Nathan loves Alex. He would do anything to protect her.”
There were glances exchanged around the room. Nate shook his head.
“I said those things to her because I thought…” He trailed off, staring at Bryant and wondering what he should say.
“I know what Alex did, and she’s not in trouble,” Bryant reassured him. “What you did was…noble. I don’t agree with it, but I understand why you did it.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Nate said. “I hurt her. I don’t deserve her. Let’s figure out how we’re going to convince Sally to release the lockdown.”
Nate wanted to steer the conversation away from Alex. It was too painful.