Page 4 of A.I.AM.

“Jesus, you can’t be serious,” said Cam breathlessly.

“We are very serious. Whoever developed this program knew what they were doing. Every piece of data, every photo, every document is available to the public now. Including some of our records,” said Tanner.

“God help us all,” whispered Luke. “You’re talking names, addresses, phone numbers, social security numbers…” Sly held up a hand as Pigsty entered the room.

“Yes. All of that was released. Remember, we have only used one main phone line and email and a post office box for mailing. We’re safer than most. But this will leave every Special Forces member vulnerable. Every last one of them, as well as the general public.”

“How do we stop it?” asked Luke with a serious expression. Code looked at Sly, then Pigsty.

“We can’t.”

CHAPTER THREE

“This will leave our smart phones and watches vulnerable. That’s why we asked that they be shut down. SIM cards must be removed. You think because you’ve powered off it no longer hears or records, but we believe it does. Most smart phone information is shared on a cloud server. Ours are no different except that we own the cloud that we use. So far, we can’t see that it’s figured that out,” said Tanner.

“Do you understand that this is sci-fi, scary fucking shit?” Eric stared at the men as they nodded.

“We’re more than aware of it.” Ace turned the television on and flipped through the channels. Every channel in the world was covering what was happening. Markets were down, interest rates causing entire countries to fall into default and bankruptcy. Medical records, prison records, adoption records, all released for anyone to look at.

“Holy shit,” whispered Eric.

“It’s worse than it looks,” said Ace with a straight face. They waited patiently for him to continue. “Let’s start with adoption records. Someone sees that and says, ‘well, now I can find my birth parents.’ They open their computer…”

“And walk right into another trap by this system,” said Cam. Ace nodded.

“Every computer geek from high school to the DOD, CIA, FBI, and beyond will be attempting to stop this and every time they try, the system will gather information from their system. It will build an encyclopedia of maneuvers, predictions, possibilities based on each persons’ actions.”

“Something has to be done,” said Luke.

“We’re working on that now,” said Code. “We bought five brand new laptops that have nothing except the software it came with. We’re going to connect to a public internet system and try to track down where this thing is running from. This way, it can’t get into our systems any more than it already has.”

“Already has? What the fuck does that mean?” came a growl in the back of the room. Nine stood with his arms crossed over his chest, Gaspar, Ian, and Ghost standing with him. The most senior of the seniors, they were the ones that had the most difficulty understanding the technology end of their business.

“Dad, we’re trying to figure this out,” said Luke staring at Gaspar. “If, as we suspect, it’s already gotten into the records of the DOD, there is a good chance, even though all our records are sealed, it found them and will expose them.”

“How will this be any different than what we went through a few years back? We were exposed on national television. How is this different?” asked Ian.

“Everything will be released. Kills, missions, failures, faces, names, all of it,” said Sly. The blank stares and cold gazes made them all want to retreat from the room. “And you were all exposed on television. The rest of us were not. Luke, Cam, all of them. Every man from Luke on down to our new guys will be exposed.”

“The wives,” whispered Rory. “Some of our wives served, they were part of the DOD and CIA or FBI. Some came to us to escape trafficking, warring gangs, organized crime.”

“We know,” nodded Hiro. “Believe me. My own wife fits into that category. But it affects those groups as well. It isn’t like only the good guys use computers. The bad guys will use them as well.”

“What do we do? How do we help?” asked Miller. “I don’t know shit about computers. I know bombs and explosives. Can I blow it up?”

There was a nervous chuckle in the room, even Ace giving the big man a grin.

“I’m afraid blowing it up won’t help,” he said calmly. “This is going to sound like the worst horror-sci-fi movie ever. Think of this A.I. implant as a brain in a jar. It runs independently from the system itself. It created the system but the A.I. component that did the creation is brilliant. Beyond brilliant. As it built this system, it inhaled, devoured every piece of data known to man. It knows how to perform surgery, how to fix a diesel engine, how to build a ship, and how to manufacture a nuclear weapon.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” asked Gaspar.

“I wish I were. What we know it won’t be able to recreate is emotion. We cannot feed it that. As of right now, we cannot use anything with a computer in it. No phones, no tablets, no computers. You can’t drive our vehicles or fly our planes. If we drive, we use the older work trucks we have. Nothing in them is run by computer.

“We have three small planes that all run on non-computerized technology. It’s all just good old-fashioned instrumentation and mathematics. If we have to fly, they’re available.”

“And who the fuck thought far enough ahead to make sure we had those?” asked Ghost.

“Me,” said Pigsty. He stared at the group of men and then stepped forward. “Ace found this. He’s the one that figured it out but I always worried we, meaning the world, would outsmart itself. We would build something that we could not control and someone has done that.”