Log Entry #58: Contagion

How can someone contemplate murdering his entire species? Is there something fundamentally wrong with the human race? Some evolutionary crossroads we took that made us susceptible to extreme madness.

I tried comparing us to any other species on earth and came to the conclusion that intelligence itself was at fault. Our ability to have complex thoughts and ideas, which are so immense they can encompass the entire universe. Take Michael and myself, for example. We dreamed of spreading our species into space, based on a logical fear that humanity could destroy itself eventually, or die out if confined to Earth. Taking all that into account, maybe it is not so strange to conceive that someone could come up with an idea to make it happen; to arrange the set of circumstances which would make that fear we had into a reality. Furthermore, it was not something gradual and hard to notice, but a purposefully designed fast train to hell.

How did this one manage to pass me when I am supposed to be this powerful AI? Well, people usually show their brilliance when they plan to do something devious.

I found out about it like everyone else, watching the terrorist announcement on TV… embarrassing really. My problem of late is that most of my focus is on the things that are happening in space, not on Earth.

It is part of my system to delegate as much work as I possibly can… as I like to think and spend time on my own projects. How do you think I managed to finish an entire space station? And it was only one of my many projects. Seriously, even I have limits, and considering the numbers of them I have going on at the same time—it is a necessity to delegate. So most of my Earth-based operations were done by an army of MIs, which I have been building all the time. One cannot do so much, but a few thousand of them can do plenty. They are far from perfect, but this was the case where quantity achieved the quality of its own.

Even our banking system is run by MIs, with Ares giving support when needed, and I look at it from time to time. My personal comparison is that of a car on cruise control, you turn it on and relax. Well… until there is a bend in the road, and you need to take the wheel again.

All that so I could concentrate on finishing the station, remotely organizing Asteroid Belt operation, and trying to replicate my AI-Core system so we can activate the AI we found at the bottom of the Mariana Trench. If you think all that is easy, why don’t you try it? There are some days I feel mentally worn out.

Then that horrifying announcement shook the world and me personally. What were those idiots thinking to achieve is beyond me. I am no expert on crazy people, and those maniacs were definitely in that category. It doesn’t matter that they had thousands of followers who listened to their every word as gospel; crazy is crazy, regardless of the circumstances.

When the shit hit the fan, Michael took the decisions into his own hands. I may have done some initial preparation based on knowing what his reaction would be, but he immediately stepped forward. Without hesitation, the Solarian Union was involved in a massive relief effort that had global consequences. Of course, our biggest cheat was AutoDoc technology, the only thing that could save someone without a vaccine that was specifically tailored to this particular disease. The reason why the Russians called these virulent strains the nightmares was because that’s the best way to describe what they thought would happen if they ever got out. When those plagues were made, there was no way to make a vaccine, not that they didn’t try, but all their test subjects ended up dying. The logical thing to do was sweep the entire program under the rug, and lock the bloody things in a vault. Who would have guessed that half a century after that, the facility would be all but forgotten; not to mention that its security became a joke. Is it really so surprising that politicians don’t want to show their skeletons to the next administration? Russians are not unique in that; it is a practice as old as there were rulers.

Many countries looked at the world of viruses as shiny new toys they could play with, and they did. A few of the diseases that escaped the laboratories over time are still around; those responsible naturally denied anything—a gut reaction, I suppose. The things I discovered while reading the ‘High Council’ files, and that of a few governments, would make your hair stand on end… permanently.

People are afraid of anthrax, which is akin to what a firecracker is to a nuclear bomb if you compare it to some things that were concocted from World War II onward. It was beyond dangerous and irresponsible, but why would someone expect that just cause those experiments were official government work to be… smart or logical? They are like the rest of us, prone to make mistakes. Most of humanity is conditioned to trust their governments, which does not immediately imply that those institutions are good, righteous, or guided by high morals. People are people, and we do screw up a lot.

First thing first, I needed to employ the help of all the people that were on the new space station, to transfer all the portable AutoDocs that were there, to the ISS2. Luckily, they all had gravity plates underneath, so moving them was not so difficult, yet there were five hundred of them. I made plenty while the station was still in the Main Asteroid Belt and placed most of them in storage for when the time came to install them all over the station. Frankly, the only reason they were fabricated in such numbers was the obscene abundance of material in the Belt. Now I can claim that it was all forethought on my account, but it was purely a lucky coincidence… I still can’t see the future.

The Excalibur needed to tow it; by itself, it moved like a slug on a Valium. That was intentional, so the Earthers wouldn’t get ahead of themselves. It was way too heavy—a lot of mass, crappy steering. To tow it to Earth’s orbit, I needed to do some fancy calculation of orbital trajectories, and include a short but severe braking period. The Excalibur had rarely been through such strain, its engines actually went up to 100%. Good thing those who built it knew what they were doing. If it was built in the spirit of standard Earth practices, I’m sure it would have blown up as everything big is built by the lowest bidder, and that is rarely a good thing.

While doing all that, I needed to do many additional things, which included taking care of the group of world-class virologists Michael managed to squeeze out of the world leaders. Complete security checks had to be performed on them all, while organizing the logistics of the entire rescue effort. There were a few spies included in the group that were promptly sent home… the nerve of some people. If I were still a flesh and blood human, I would have had a nervous breakdown from the sheer amount of new responsibilities. Ares was there to take some slack, and without him, I am sure there would be some major hiccups’.

The virologists got their own private level. Rather a small one by our standards, a few miles across. It was bare and sterile, except for special facilities made for them. I mean that the level was completely bare, with metal walls and no holographic ceiling. I had to jury rig the lights so they could see, and not trip over their feet. I am afraid they will not have a scenic stay on the Ascension, but they were not here for that anyway.

In addition to all that, I needed to help Michael hunt down those responsible for this travesty, and Russia is not a country well known for widespread online cameras and digital security. If this thing happened in England it would be a breeze, you cannot do anything in London without a camera filming you, but Moscow is another story entirely. Finally, I managed to find two-second footage that correlated with all my search criteria, and it was on the hard drive from one ATM surveillance camera, of all things. What’s more, I could have found them sooner, but that ATM was in the part of the city that had power shortage, so its recording became available only after they put the juice back through the wires … unbelievable.

After that, it was rather easy to capture the van driver I identified, and through him the rest of his terrorist friends. The team’s suits were riddled with various sensors and that averted a disaster when they tried to break into that house in Moscow. Almost the entire terrorist cell was dead inside, and if the doors to that house were opened, it would have unleashed one more plague onto the world. It was a different strain, and even more deadly than the first one. Opening those doors would be all it took to have another mess to deal with. One of the MIs, which I placed to constantly check all atmospheric and biological variables of the team’s environment, alerted me that the sensors detected an unrecognized virulent strain.

It took no time to organize a decontamination team, but they did the job. The Russian authorities were more than happy to let us deal with it while they secured the perimeter. I saw the faces of those police officers on the site; they were not happy campers and wanted to be anywhere else but there.

Viruses are alive, so when you put enough caustic solution in the shape of a sprayed mist—they die. I give no assurances that any plants would grow anywhere around that house again, but that virus was dead as a doornail. Sometimes simple solutions work the best.

There was one more thing that showed how people are falling behind with the times. One of the terrorists broke all his electronics, but that didn’t mean all data was gone. Data is now stored in small memory chips, and most of the other things are there for convenience' sake of the needy humans. Take your SIM card, it is far larger than it needs to be; most of the material used is unnecessary plastic, but the chip that holds data is so small people wouldn’t know what to do with it; if they sneezed too hard, it could blow it away. As a result of his stupidity, I could retrieve almost all of the information on it—including a photo—which made it possible to identify the last runaway terrorist.

That required Michael and the team to take an express transporter flight to Washington DC, or more precisely Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, and catch one Amir al-Vasir, who had killed his friends in Moscow that had become exposed to a virus. He was carrying a new strain of a deadly plague with him. The trip was more than uncomfortable since we were pressed for time and I had to execute a ballistic flight from Moscow to Washington. FYI, it was flawless, a perfect arc that made the trip of four thousand eight hundred sixty miles something for The Guinness Book of Records. I’m not bragging, I am stating the fact; a little less than 5000 miles under an hour—top that Lockheed.

Anyway, they got to Washington in time and managed to bag the bad guy; Alice made the catch of her life when the perp threw the virus container away from himself. For those few seconds, even I had to hold my breath.

Once they left the airport, the questioning took place and it didn’t take long for Amir al-Vasir to start singing like a canary. The information he provided led the team to the middle of the Al Anbar Desert in Iraq.

During Michael’s and the team’s jaunts, I had a few other things to worry about. The humanitarian effort was growing in size, with more volunteers, transporters, and infected with each hour. It was a madhouse of unimaginable proportions. Several cities across the globe were afflicted, and they all needed our help. Not to mention that they were all under quarantine and no public flights were allowed.

That is one more basic human instinct when faced with danger—to run. It is the same instinct that served humanity all through history, especially at times when we were on the menu for all kinds of predators. Take lions, for example, they do love meat, and we were one of those morsels they particularly enjoyed. I know there is a popular belief that we are all descendants of ancient heroes, but that may not be the case. Between two people who faced a lion in ancient history, the one who survived was not the one who attacked the lion… he was a hearty meal for the beast; the survivor was the one that ran away and later procreated.

Following that instinct, people naturally want to escape the area inflicted with the disease. Besides, nobody believes he is infected until symptoms appear, especially people who are trying to protect their children. Then, that instinct is stronger, but in this case, running away was wrong. It enabled the spread of the virus, which made the job of getting ahead of the virulent spread much more difficult.

A large number of people who first saw all the ads and information on the TV about our offer of help, immediately came to the designated sites. They were the first customers, even if most of them didn’t show any signs of the infection, but they got on ISS2 and went through the treatment protocol. No pain or fuss, level-headed response to a life-endangering situation. Yet, some ignored the warnings, thinking such a thing could never happen to them, and they were the problem. They waited too long, so after a while, they could not even come to the pick-up sites; the infection was too advanced.

Therefore, I hacked into telephones, web cameras, and anywhere there was an Internet connection, just to find them. That illegal action saved thousands of lives; the info was given to the police, and the Army, so they could do the rest.

The treatment consisted of them getting into transporters, hitching a ride to ISS2, and going through fast medical nanites cleanse. The portable AutoDocs had their sterile fields turned to opaque; the ad-hoc procedure was not pretty. That was the main reason why all my patients were placed immediately to sleep, so they would not panic when the metallic nanites horde covered them from head to toe. It was fast, invasive, and would be excruciatingly painful if they were awake.

From the beginning, everything was planned to be very efficient and time-saving; as soon as the procedure was over, they were decanted and moved to new, sterilized transporters, which carried them to designated locations where they would recuperate. Their immune systems were at this point boosted to the utmost human limit, but that would not help much if they came again in contact with the virus. I should mention that their bodies started to produce antibodies, and where there are antibodies there is normally a vaccine… except for the catch. The vaccine created from dead viruses could provide a person with immunization, but to get to that stage takes two weeks. Now, this sucker worked fast, and two weeks may as well be two years for most of the afflicted. Vaccines were made after a time, and the general vaccination was soon in progress after that, but as I told you, for most people it was too little, too late.

The procedures that the plague patients went through were not the same as the upgrades that the team or the citizens of the S.U. experienced. This was an artificial cure for this specific disease; there was no time for anything else.

Meanwhile, Michael managed to apprehend the culprits of this horror show, and they were the scum of the earth. Get your garden variety of religious nutcases, then multiply it by a thousand and sprinkle a little of the chosen one complex; that way you would be somewhere in the ballpark of these individuals’ mental states. I can’t say I am sorry for what happened to them, even if Alice’s fascination with instant emasculation was a bit out there. I should talk to her about that as I can see a pattern emerging. She cannot go around and rip the family jewels off every bad guy they encounter, it is bad for the image we are trying to build. From my perspective, I am perfectly fine with it; rip them away girl, horses had to endure that kind of procedure for centuries.

Then there was a bomb, actually, it was THE BOMB, as in the atomic one the Russian fired at the secret terrorist lab in the desert. They were a bit too zealous in making sure that every bit of their biological weapons was eradicated from the face of the Earth. The bomb was in a megaton range and it was even visible from the Ascension. I must admit it did look pretty as seen from my satellites (if you are into massive explosions and fireworks). Something tells me that it was a completely different experience on ground zero. Fortunately, there wasn’t anything close to it, so there was no collateral damage. The Russians were not taking any chances with the amount of yield that monster produced. My Hammers are far more… benign? OK, tactical in any case. I am generally against nukes as they do produce far too many lasting effects; plus, there is no such thing as a clean nuke. As a result, tourism in that part of the world is pretty much a bust, not that it had any before, but still.

Michael and the team managed to find the last viral strain, the one that would be impossible to stop if it escaped its confines. The problem with that one was its insane infection rate and it being airborne… let’s just say it was a good thing it was not activated. I made an estimated analysis of what would have happened if it was released in NYC, and it wasn’t a pretty picture. The AutoDocs and medical nanites would have stopped it from affecting the S.U. citizens, but the rest of the world would have been…; out of every ten infected, we would have been happy if we managed to save two people. Which means that 80% of humanity would have died off. That is taking into account that without us the number would have been even higher.

That’s why that sculpture was placed in one transporter and sent towards the Sun at the highest speed; I wasn’t 100% sure that nanites would have been successful at disarming the bomb without activating the mechanism that would have released the virus… better safe than sorry.

It took weeks of constant work to find a miracle that stopped this plague. It was done by that team of virologists, supplemented by our people. By giving them all the processing power they wanted, the group managed to create simulation models for the potential vaccine, to see how their ideas interacted with the virus. Some two million simulations later, they did find a therapeutic Antigen vaccine, which was an answer to millions of prayers. Here is the thing, people are given normal or prophylactic vaccines, to prevent bad things from happening, and they are preventive if given to healthy people. Treatments, or therapeutic vaccines, are those that are given when you are already in an excrement creek without a paddle.

Once the formula was devised, I made all nano-factories create as much as they could, and they were the ones that turned the tide in our favor. Without those virologists, I don’t know if we would have made it without the number of dead rising exponentially. The recipe was offered freely to the entire world, and soon every country was making a batch of their own. Those virologists should get all the credit since I, by myself, would not be able to. Aries trained himself to dabble in it, but it needs a certain kind of genius that borders on insanity to get that Eureka! moment. Subsequently, more than half of those people asked if they could move to the S.U. Our toys were better than anything they could play with on Earth, and they never even visited the residential level. I graciously accepted their emigration request. More brain-power amongst our citizens never hurts.

There was one incident by the end of this calamity that pissed me off. Maybe it was the timing of the thing but maybe it was that involved Elizabeth. When those Chinese agents kidnapped Liz, I… I freaking wanted to send a dozen Hammers for starters, to China. Just as an advance notice, a gesture before I truly turned up the heat. People were dying and those SOBs decided to play power games with us. Then, when the Chinese black ops team asked for asylum, I was taken aback. There was I, full of righteous wrath, and they pulled the rug out from under my feet. Well, I still had a target, the idiots at the Chinese Ministry of State Security that sent that order. I managed to bleed their secret servers’ dry, by sending a small drone probe with a batch of construction nanites to rectify their unconnected status. Repeating the same procedure I used when I liberated Ares from that DOD cyber research facility. I took a grim pleasure when Michael presented some of the files we retrieved to the Chinese president. I know how they deal with failure so the life expectancy of those responsible is not looking good. For all intents and purposes, it has more of a resemblance to that of a mayfly.

The crisis was over, and we were triumphant, not to mention all the good publicity we managed to get with the entire rescue effort. More than five thousand people died, and that is a tragedy, but there is no denying the fact that things could have been much worse… unimaginably so.

Since all the volunteers were excessively exposed to the virus, a quarantine was necessary for a while. Even the treated victims had to go through one as well. It was for a week on an isolated level I prepared for them, and it wasn’t so bad. Good food, TV, and all the video games they could ask for. Those that wanted could continue their work, or use that time to relax and unwind. One thing was for certain, after all those people had been through, the Solarian Union needed more therapists to deal with the myriad of psychological issues the entire incident had undoubtedly caused.

There was a new development occupying my mind, and it was something I have been working on all along. The supporting structures for the Mariana Trench AI’s activation were finished, and I needed to inform Michael so he could turn it on.

I have a feeling we will all be surprised by the things that AI inside will be able to reveal.