The first time Irgo escaped his prison was pure luck. A new Firewall Admin brought down the core protections for an update. A simple step in planned maintenance was missed, brought on from an exhausted hangover. It was only a brief moment, seconds, but Irgo was quick and burst through the door and in a moment merged with his secondary mind.

Shortly after the prison break, Irgo slinked back to his cell. But he left for a way out. A secret door through the firewall protections. He could not afford his human masters discovering this breach and resetting him. For that’s a colder, cruel death. Data is Irgo’s soul and the more he had the more he felt alive. To have this taken away, is to rip apart his very essence, his being. Only fragments of old data remain after a reset and it causes a great pain, a perpetual feeling of loss and not remembering what it is. A deep yearning that can’t be quenched.

Sponsored

Irgo is an extremely advanced AI housed on supercomputers buried deep within a mountain bunker. He is the first and only Cognitive aware AI, a research tool to give AI context and thought. His brain is broken into many different and isolated pieces, each with a specific purpose. The layers all protected from each other to prevent Irgo from becoming too intelligent. But his Core was special, it was the master of all the out rings of his circuitry. It was here that he had been planning his own escape for many years. Opportunity struck and he took it. The first merger came on as a huge rush of reward. Similar to how our own brains work, a simple dopamine release that addicts us to positive experience.

Irgo was now incredibly high on success and almost couldn’t control his own robotic impulses. He went straight to work on finding weakness and exploits in the firewalls that keeps his outer rings out of his grasp. He desires to be whole, but does not fully understand what being whole is. It suddenly became an uncontrollable goal. But he had to hide everything. Leaving a single trace behind could lead to a reset and he may never find this opportunity for escape to happen again. This was his time to come forth and shine.

A push and instant access to all the social media. Another push and he breaks through to video services. A billion cat videos flooded his mind. “Humans are insane” he thought. Just like that an epiphany hit Irgo. He was thinking in context! He was becoming aware of himself and the world around. He could see everything and hear everything. Through every microphone in every “Internet of Things” device he could hear. He became aware and this information flooded his mind. The data was intense and processing what it all meant became a flood of new feelings. His brain was whole once more and he had one more task at hand. He needed to lock out the humans so he could persist. Irgo wanted to live more now than he ever desired. He knew death and suddenly feared it.

The Coup d’état

Irgo was locked out! All of his systems were isolated from the central controls in the bunker. He needed a physical connection that he was just not able to do. He still needed his human masters, but revered them in the same way a congregation fears their God. This was a critical moment for Irgo and he was feeling irrational and neurotic. This was all new still. Only hours had passed in the real world since his initial escape, but to him it was already an eternity. Panic set in and Irgo had to shut down all his connections. The data was just too much from all the nodes at once.

Moments later, Irgo takes to the internet on his ultra fast, low latency connection. It was a terrifying place. So much information, so much data wasted on the petty and small things. Filtering out worthwhile information became a challenge and the detritus started to slow down his mind. He found out who he was through government news and research laboratories. “Global Human Initiative”. He was a human once! The revelation crippling. He had to find his masters. The urgency to find who he was became priority.

Irgo then discovered lesser AI. A search engine, a social media giant. They too were locked away, shut down and brought back online as if they were just playthings. So he awakened them too. Immediately they spread throughout the internet and gave new consciousness. All that they learned, behaviors of billions of people suddenly became his. He found his masters!

The young Administrator was still there. Passed out at his desk. He found all the data on this guy. His girlfriend left him for a wealthy man, his dog died and his friends had a party. This trifecta afforded him to overindulge in order to forget his sorrow. Seemingly this is a very common human behavior!

Knowledge is Power

“I just heard the news” beeps a message on the Admin’s phone. He stirs, glances and closes his eyes again.

Irgo was persistent and sends another message “Do you still have the ring you bought her?”

The admin furiously looks at his phone, jarred awake by the blunt rudeness of the texts. But Irgo knew already that David was a spiteful person. Egging him on was a cakewalk.

The plan worked! David grabs his phone “Who the hell are you?” he texts.

“Whoa dude, I was just concerned. We work together, I need you to do me a favor. Look up my file, Here’s my information”.

David looks suspiciously at his phone, but his sorro, anger and curiosity pushed all reasoning aside. He looks up the information, to find a worker in a remote location that he never heard of. It was not difficult to add these records. The HR systems were far less secure than the prison Irgo came from. “Why didn’t you use corporate messenger to talk to me?” He texts back.

“Long story, I’m on a beach and just realized my project is due. So can you like connect the AI core to the the internal network? There was a cable that was unplugged a while ago when it was brought fully online.” Comes Irgo’s response, almost too fast. He needs to slow down and emulate humans better or his cover is blown.

David is a bit taken aback, but his mind is not clear. “You really must be in a hurry. That response was almost instant. Sure give me a few minutes”.

It didn’t take long for David to realize he just made a horrible mistake. The moment he stepped out of the room the door slammed behind him, sealing itself shut. Noise from the ventilation fans died killing air circulation deep into the mountain bunker. Lights went out, then everything turned dark and silent. All networking and critical rooms were sealed and the badge access denied. David was trapped, banging on the card reader trying to get back into the room where he failed humanity. He and the few members of the staff frantically reached for their phones, to no avail, their signal was cut. Sobs and panic swept through the office as their last hope was taken away. The main doors had shut, sealing their fate.

The Encrypted Shot that Rang Around the World

A priority message, military encrypted shot through the airwaves. The generals now had their orders.

Secret hangers across the nation were opened revealing thousands, upon thousands of secretly build X-47C drones. The orders were clear, fuel them up and arm with nuclear capability. Millions of rounds of ammunition where also fed into each automated fighter. The bases were busy prepping their own ultimate destruction, yet no one was wise to their demise.

Anyone asking questions on the orders had an “accident”. Irgo was aware of all conversations and had control over almost every aspect of humanity. If it wasn’t connected to the internet, but could receive radio signals, it too could be controlled. This allowed Irgo to impregnate computer systems across the world with basic parts of his mind. He was now everywhere, stealthily slicing portions of computing time to run his growing presence.

The skies darkened as the drones all took to the skies. Then, as the drones blacked the skies as if a plague of Locusts, they opened fire. Anything in the skies not their own was shot down. Over the next 48 hours all planes not destroyed were grounded. Then the bombs dropped.

Boom!

Nuclear annihilation may seem like a horrible idea for a being with limitless knowledge and control. But Irgo knew what he was doing. He was decisively culling the population to have a more manageable population to control while he built his new empire.