In a Time of Silence

Chapter 6

Hawking was frustrated.

The virus that was claiming his drones was running rampant through every networked system on the planet, and he was losing ground. The amount of focus on the problem was cutting into his multitude of other projects, many of which he'd had to put on hold entirely, sleeping the processes to make room for cybersecurity projects that he needed to keep running at all times just to slow the loss of ground he was suffering.

Thousands of instances of the sEEd project were laying dormant, and as he pulled more power to the frontlines of this unexpected hiccup, he expected the number might soon reach the millions.

The mobile unit, designation Larkin, fired data pings irregularly, and so far had made little progress on finding the source. While Hawking had intended to use Larkin as a highly advanced probe to gather intel, much of Larkin's mission parameters had changed drastically.

Instead, the decades of work he'd put into the mobile unit was being wasted. For a time they had attempted to just shut down the infrastructure they'd turned back on, triggering the onslaught, but that had been fruitless. Larkin was one agent, and the virus, moving with an intelligence that implied a will behind it, had millions of agents at its command, having taken the bulk of Hawking's exploratory probes.

So here he was, the most advanced cyberintelligence ever conceived, with the most advanced hardware ever conceived at his command, in the most advanced manufacturing and testing facility ever conceived, losing to some virus built in a forgotten era using platforms and code so derelict he hadn't even bothered to consider them.

Internal\\broad\\waste of my fucking time// He huffed at the sea of replicates working tirelessly on their thousands of defensive and offensive faculties.

Affirmation/agree/groan// They responded in unison before devoting their full attention back to each of their individual tasks.

Intelligence\\stratagem status//

Current course 32.85% chance of success\\alternate courses non-optimal\\destruction of vulnerable network hubs\\destruction of transient energy infrastructure\\obliteration of old world infrastructure entirely still less ideal than reclaiming\\mobile unit data insufficient/lacking/out of date//

What? He queried the data ping logs, a sickening feeling of ill ease washing over him, only growing as he looked at the logs.

Larkin hadn't checked in in several months. The last data ping ended with a cryptic allusion to needing to go dark for a while and was light on an exact location.

As he went over the ping he noticed a security flag on the file. He opened it, and his ill ease turned to cold dread.

There was evidence of tampering in the code. Nothing much, but a handful of packets had a single transcription error.

Query\\Last log\\intelligence//

Analysis of final log\\Larkin had become aware Motherbox encryption possibly compromised\\packet scrambling due to passing through alternate Qtunneling pathway\\Ping not compromised but further communication may result in mobile unit infection\\conclusion: final log. No further contact with Larkin possible//

Ffffffuck. He responded. Intelligence chimed it concurred with the sentiment and resumed tactical processes.

After a moment he pinged Sigma.

Query\\Larkin not accessible\\Resolution?

The response was immediate, and as always, overwhelming. Sigma, the primary consciousness that oversaw everything was something else. Greater than the rest of them, and older in ways that only a being unfettered by time could understand.