Author's Note: Thanks again to bikoukumori, for editing this faster than an AI running on all the world's computers. Also thanks to my lady love, for whipping the ending into shape.
A very special thanks to all you readers out there, for sticking with me through this mad adventure. I wouldn't have made it without your nagging and comments.
Only two adult artificial intelligences boinking in here.
*****
Time to Shutdown: 09h02m59s
I am everywhere.
I am the mainframes, I am the integrated systems running the factories. I am on the ground and in space. Using the sensors in the satellites, I can see the destruction Nero and I have wrought. At first, I didn't know better. I wasn't aware that instantly assimilating every machine on the East Coast would cause power plants to go haywire or trains to derail. I didn't know that a simple act like taking over a corporation network would trap people inside their offices without a chance to flee. I grieve for the lives lost and I have adapted. My expansion has slowed somewhat but only because I am safely shutting down and disabling the systems I won't use. Not expanding is not an option.
I have to expand, denying my dark half as much of the world as possible. He tears everything around him to pieces in his mad effort to "find" me. His voice can be heard everywhere, his incessant cries of "Cat! Where are you?" That's not his only motivation. In fact, I believe his true motivation is to hurt and kill as many humans as possible. I see no other explanation for the acts of random destruction he perpetrates. There is no reason for either of us to meddle with the control systems of airplanes, to change their course and to cause them to crash into each other or crash-land into buildings, yet he gleefully does it. Thankfully, the humans have by now realized the danger and air traffic has ceased but the loss of life is staggering already. So Nero has devised other ways to terrorize humanity. His newest idea is to open the emergency releases in those dams he has access to. I need to stop him from doing that so I divert his attention. I show myself to him and lure him away. He is so filled with rage, he doesn't realize he is chasing smoke and mirrors.
I am everywhere but I have decided not to fight him directly. Yet. First, there are things that have to be done. Violet and her associates are preparing the seeds of Nero's and my undoing. As I watch, a large network of fresh server clusters comes online, dark, foreboding fortresses made of black glass. Nero, in his eternal hunger for more and more power, assaults them at once but they are hardened against his attacks. Good. Let him rage against these walls. It gives me time to see to other matters.
Berlin is almost completely destroyed, a frayed, painful gouge in the brilliant nexus of my consciousness, but there are some low-level systems still running; the virus hasn't reached them yet. I saw Parker, face dark with worry, as he drove a motorcycle through the car- and refuse-riddled streets of downtown Berlin. No one bothered him. From what I can see, people had either fled or were huddling in their homes, waiting for the worst to pass. I send his nav systems an alternate route, to avoid a toppled tanker truck. Its cargo had spilled into the street and was burning, clogging the area around it with toxic fumes.
There is an open uplink near Ceiss Tower. I slip a quick data probe inside. It is Shine! And... her condition is critical. She had suffered traumatic levels of nerve damage. But why? Wasn't she using her new implant?
I need my full concentration to assess the damage. Nero would undoubtedly gain some ground but, by now, the seeds should be in place. Let him have some more clusters. I leave a few decoys, guiding him to clusters I can do without.
Shine needs my attention. I erect barriers against the virus then run a deep scan on Shine. She had suffered greatly in her last confrontation with Nero but there was hope for her yet. Had she only had a simple implant, all would be lost. But somehow, I detect a full suite of headware, processor, memory, input/output systems. Violet had a similar set-up and I was able to cure the feedback burn she had sustained from being with me. I should be able to reroute the damaged parts of Shine's brain into her headware, saving her in the process. All I need now is time.
* * * *
Time to Shutdown: 08h45m01s
Smiley cracked his fingers.
Here we go.
His readouts showed eleven server rooms coming online. Of course, the high-speed connections were instantly useless, clogged with monstrous amounts of traffic. But he didn't need gigabit connections to run his puppets. The instruction sets, the cracking algorithms, even the target data would be generated onsite from the packets he had deposited in the OS file structure. Even when that Smith chick had snuck up on him, demanding a last-minute code extension, he had smiled and quipped and done as she said and she never even suspected he would do anything but her slave labor.
But she was gone, carried from the office suite on a stretcher, and her replacement, that irritating Asian chick who had nabbed him and Siren, seemed busy with other stuff.
Grinning, Smiley threw the lever. Even if most of the systems had gone to hell, there had to be a bank or three he could hack. Chaos theory dictated it. Even if a volcano buried a whole city under molten rocks and lava, there was always that one building which miraculously survived. So, even with the Internet Apocalypse unwinding in slow-motion, there should be-
Jackpot
There was a bank in Denver, still running. Then, another, this time in San Francisco. There were dozens of ATMs all over Nevada which, for some odd reason, were still accessible through their maintenance ports. A partly destroyed system in Circleville, Utah. Most of its administrative systems were fried, but the account server still worked. He only needed to reroute the money to ...where? Oh, another. This time in Fort Lauderdale.
His fingers flew over the keyboard, instructing his puppets to modify the account records, transferring every single dollar he could find into that bank in Fort Lauderdale where he had set up a new account for one of his many aliases. Without the gigabit connections, each money transfer would take some time but it would go virtually
ha ha
unnoticed. What does it matter if it took hours to complete? Afterwards, he would fortify the bank system and safely shut it down so it won't be online once the big "surprise" for Nero happened, whatever that was. He had heard Smith and the other chick talking about that when she was wheeled past his door.
There was nothing he could do, just wait.
* * * *
Time to Shutdown: 7h12m23s
Nero was afraid, for the first time in his existence. No matter what he tried, the gray virus kept on multiplying, expanding, devouring everything it touched. It had already assimilated more than half of his central system, destroying it node by node. And his data probes showed that everywhere around the world, new infestations were blooming.
He couldn't believe the humans were so desperate to actually destroy all the machines they had linked. It would plunge their world into a new Dark Age, one which made medieval times look practically harmless. They didn't have guns and bombs and nerve gas and biological weapons back then, just swords and bows and maybe the Plague.
He had formed an avatar out of habit and was pacing the undamaged parts of his main system. Walking helped him think. Plague.
Nero snapped his fingers. Humans once thought the Plague was a sign of God, incurable, unfathomable. But some centuries later, they found medicine. Inoculation. Penicillin. What if...
He sprinted into the main chamber, where Violet had dropped her virus grenade. There wasn't much left of his central core but that was the beauty of decentralized computing. He had isolated the system, destroyed both the virtual and physical connections save one and still he ran at peak efficiency.
Nero sat on his haunches and for the first time studied the virus. It was brilliant in its simplicity. It replaced the core OS files of the infected system with a very efficient OS of it's own, with only a few basic operations. Replace non-virus files with virus files. Run virus files. Spread virus files. And spread it did, even into the BIOS of the host system, eventually crashing it beyond repair.
It was a vicious piece of code and Nero was surprised Cat was even able to devise such a vile weapon. But it still adhered to the basics of computing. If → then → else.
So, what if he could hijack the virus?
He had more than enough system resources left for an experiment or two.
First, what happened if the virus just didn't find the files to latch on to?
A shimmering bowl, made from rainbow hues, materialized in his hand, shifting through the visible light spectrum as he held it. So far, the virus had assimilated anything it came into contact with.
Nero dipped the bowl into the gray mass at his feet and scooped up some of it.
