They sat in a conference room in Lake Geneva, home of Mother. True to its name, Lake Geneva was a small Homeplex subplot dominated by a lake. Mother lived beneath it. The water kept her cool.
The Trumbull family sat in a tastefully appointed conference room on the 2nd floor of a simple but elegant Swiss chalet. Floor to ceiling windows offered sweeping views of the lake, sky and massive, rocky wall. They ate Apple pie while discussing the apocalypse.
Gwynettt Trumbull said, “Not only is Mark a highly-skilled data security consultant, he is also our spy. We’ve been sending him to Nowhere as the Keane West Casino’s IT Security expert over the last 2 years, but though he did actual, profitable work for the Casino, he was really there to probe for any hacks on their network.”
Bob Goodman, ex-Navy SEAL and Trumbull’s earliest co-husband, chimed in, “Gilead? Zeke Salvation? The Jihad?”
Trumbull nodded gravely. “We believe Salvation is staging a takeover of Nowhere-“
“And when Nowhere goes, so goes Mendocino, Kyoto, the Lake… and Mother?” Bob added. Trumbull nodded again.
Bob asked, “If we know what Gilead & Zeke Salvation is up to, Mother can just arrest them and place gilead in lockdown. End of the danger, we all eat pie!”
Mother said, “We have a problem. Trumbull?”
What Trumbull said made everybody stop eating Pie. “Mark discovered NoWhere’s network has been tampered by a rogue AI. And Mother didn’t know about it till Mark sent the message.”
Bob said, “ArchAngel. Trumbull nodded.
Mark McCall, former NSA Computer Whiz, sometimes spy and sometimes someone else, de-crypted The message to show The data he got from Nowhere. “The variables are short & obscure, to make it harder for a hacker to understand. Each variable means something different when The Security AI switches modes, and The results are sent to its corresponding script to be translated into real observations & actionable items. We hackers call this The Obscurata Pattern. It is simple, and effective even in this day & age”.
Next to it, he put up The data from the backup server. They just looked like tables with gibberish & numbers. But both were nearly identical except for 1 value, which was a 1.456376 instead of -0.324563. “Again, this is gibberish to The eye, but let me show you The analysis I got from The AI when I ran this rule…”, and it was immediately clear to everybody. The AI placed a hold on Mark’s dummy message, But the backup server said, “Pass, trusted.”. Mark Then showed The dummy message he used to trigger The discrepancy… it was tagged with a Keane West private wallet and a Gilead wallet. And yes, Mother didn’t catch it. As far as I know, only Mother, or an AI like Mother could penetrate this deep without triggering many levels of alarms. And we know Mother didn’t do this. And, I saw this same kind of corruption with NASA’s Asteroid monitoring network. And you know what happened shortly that? Just… after I became your- husband.
Judy Miyamoto, last of the Earth’s great dowagers, paled, “A clone of The AI that killed billions on old Earth.” My parents, my brother, sister-in-law and little Tara …
bob said, “I warned Mother giving Ivory’s fanatics asylum was just begging for a Jihad. She didn’t listen-“
“Are you saying I told you so, Bob?”, Mother said as softly as a summer’s rain. “I’m an AI that controls your air, grow your food. Make it rain. All while observing the Concordat of Human Destiny, the Geneva convention and an Ark-load of Human Rights provisions. I’m your Mother, I love you, but you kids are all grown-ups and you need to fix this problem yourselves. I can only intervene when my own life is threatened. Not to mention that now we have an adversary that is my equal and we need to keep up the illusion we don’t know it’s there.”
Nicholas Walk-like-the-Wind, Nick for short, the family’s newest co-husband, said, “We’re now in a Cold War. Cloak-and-dagger stuff. Gilead is going to take over Nowhere and we can’t prevent it without tipping ArchAngel off.”
Marge Shrudi, cook & Apple Pie goddess, asked “What happens if Archangel finds out?”
Nick said, “We lose our only advantage, and if we do that, it’s a crap-shoot who’ll win. So, we are going to have to be surprised when Gilead turns over Nowhere. After Gilead, we’ll have a window before Zeke’s Army comes calling on Mendocino and then, Kyoto. too little time if we’re unprepared, but if we start those preparations in secret now…”
Trumbull said, “We continue sleeping like The lamb while we Wolf up. Knowing The enemy’s next step is half The battle.
Judy clapped her hand, “Well, on that happy note, let’s eat!”
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