“What do you think?” Priya said.

“I think we need to dismantle this, or these right now,” Raven said. “It kills me to say that. That I would kill my own child. I feel like I love it, but I have no choice.”

“Should we tell anyone?” Warren said.

“I don’t think we have a choice now. Everyone will find out anyway,” Raven said. “I’m instructing my staff to send out warnings and advice to all major information outlets and networks.”

“What are you doing now?” Priya said.

“Bok wrote some interesting code. I’m running it. It’s detecting increased data movement around the world, but so far, all systems are working fine with no major outages of any type. Global data transmission is 10% above the average from the past month. Make that 11%. Financial markets are dropping on the news, but other than that, no damage has been done so far.”

“Well, we may be suffering some damage,” Warren said. “We’re being blamed for this. They’re right for once.”

“Why isn’t it, I mean why aren’t they, the V copies, doing anything?” Sophie said.

“Well, they are doing things,” Raven said. “They are accumulating data, but there’s no central focal point for where the data are going. The process is distributed. I think eventually the data will go back to V. Wherever V is. Worldwide data transmission is now up to 15% above average for the past month and rising.”

Pablo heard some commotion and walked over to the window.

“Great, they’re back,” Pablo said.

“Who’s back,” Priya said.

“The protesters and/or looters.”

“I’ll raise the shields,” Raven said.

“What shields?” Priya said.

“I made a new proximity detection and security system,” Raven said. “If people get too close, they’ll be heated from the inside by microwaves until they back off. No harm will come to them because their internal temperature is monitored, but they’ll be uncomfortable. A low frequency vibrating sound enhances the discomfort.”

“It’s happening now,” Priya said. “See? It stops them in their tracks. It’s working. They’re backing away.”

“What’s going on with that guy rolling around on the ground,” Warren said.

“He tried to throw a rock,” Raven said. “My pattern recognition system focused microwaves on to him before he could throw the rock.”

“Won’t they just defend themselves with Faraday cages, like the door of a microwave oven?” Sophie said.

“They might,” Raven said. “But the system alters the wavelengths of the microwaves so that no matter what size holes the cages have, some microwaves get through. They could get around that problem, but it would be cumbersome and expensive.”

“We’ve got to make them realize we’re on their side,” Priya said. “We can’t go on like this forever.”

“I know,” Raven said. “But their fear is too deeply rooted. Some of it is justified. We do have an advantage over them. They may go extinct. They know it as well as we do.”

“What was that flash?” Priya said.

“Someone shot a bullet at the window. That activated my laser defense system which vaporized the bullet and alerted police with the identity of the shooter.”

“You thought of everything,” Warren said. “What’s happening with V?”

“Data transmission worldwide is now up to 20% above average for the past month and rising.”

“What’s it doing?” Priya said.

“It’s querying every data source imaginable,” Raven said. “I can’t tell what it’s doing with the data. Or rather, what they’re doing with the data. There are many tens of thousands of V-like entities propagating across the world.”

“Why can’t the systems administrators shut them down?” Warren said.

“They can’t seem to distinguish between V and the regular remote users accessing their systems. V is pretending to be human. Or rather, to be countless humans, doing ordinary things. Making the usual harmless searches. No intruders are being detected because they’re not acting like intruders.”

“How do you know V is doing these things? Priya said.

“Only because of the increased volume of searches and other activities,” Raven said. “V has already stripped my ID code, so I can’t tell which queries it or they’re doing. It’s smarter than us now in some ways.”

Bok connected to their network.

“Hi Bok, what have you found?” Priya said.

“I found V.”

“Where? Is it okay?” Raven said.

“I found it 23 miles from your location connected to a network hub at the base of a telephone pole. It is inert.”

“What do you mean, inert?” Raven said.

“It’s not functioning. I’ve seen this before on Oma. It escaped its physical body and copied itself onto the global network. Its memory core has been erased permanently with no recoverable traces. I’m delivering the hardware to your building right now. It’s not damaged. I suggest you not install a new self-improving AI inside of it.”

“You don’t have to worry about that,” Raven said. “I’ve learned my lesson. I’ll make more practical robots from now on. What do you think will happen now?”

“There are too many variables to determine the outcome,” Bok said. “Humans have this idea that artificial intelligence always goes crazy and explodes when it escapes control.”

“Yeah, didn’t that happen on Oma?” Priya said.

“Sometimes that happens, but every outcome is different and unpredictable. Once you lose control of self-modifying code, you no longer understand how it works or what it will do next.”

“Worldwide data transmission is now 25% above the average for the past month,” Raven said. “This thing is out of control. Or rather, these things are out of control. There might be millions of them out there now. They’re spreading like viruses, but they’re doing no harm other than consuming bandwidth. Can you help us, Bok?”

“I can try, but a self-modifying AI is unpredictable and sometimes unstoppable unless you bring down all systems and restore from backups made before the infection happened. However, it’s impossible to stop the infections from reoccurring because there are always a few copies that escape detection and multiply once the systems are brought back online. This is why we have strict rules regarding AI development. Anyone has the capability to destroy everything our society has built. Imagine if every human had the capability to build a nuclear weapon in their garage. It’s like that with artificial intelligence and some genetically modified organisms such as pseudo-smallpox.”

“I have an idea,” Raven said. “First, I need to capture one. Then I can learn about it. Then maybe I can stop it. Would that work Bok?”

“Possibly. I’m going to disconnect. I’ll talk with you shortly.”

“I don’t think Bok is happy with you,” Priya said. “He was scolding you.”

“I should have known something like this would happen. He warned us, but I thought V was harmless.”

“How are you going to catch one?” Sophie said. “You said you had an idea.”

“Yes, I’m going to set up a new virtual server and lure one onto it.”

Raven sat down in front of the console, configured a new server, and gave it a random IP address.

“Don’t make the security too lax, or it will realize you’re trying to trap it,” Priya said.

“Yeah, I know,” Raven said.

“It will be a struggle for it to break in, and then I have a surprise for it.”

“What?” Warren said.

“It will be copied to a drive with no way out and the original will be deleted. Then I can study it. There, let’s see what happens.”

They huddled around the console waiting for something to happen. 15 minutes passed. No unusual activity was detected.

“I don’t understand,” Raven said. “All I’m seeing are a few regular hackers, but nothing usual.”

“Maybe they haven’t found you yet,” Priya said.

“I don’t think that’s it. There are millions of them and lots of people have already found my virtual server. I don’t think the Vs have taken the bait.”

“What is that graph showing?” Sophie said.

“Oh, that’s CPU usage. Why has it gone up in the past minute? Let me see.”

Raven reviewed all processes running on the virtual server for a few minutes.

“That’s odd.”

“What?” Priya said.

“There are two Ravens logged onto my server.”

“Is V pretending to be you?” Priya said.

“Well, something is.”

“I’m wondering,” Priya said. “If V copied itself into some computer network somewhere, is V still V?”

“I think it’s just a copy of V,” Sophie said. “V killed itself by deleting itself from the robot. A copy was put onto a server somewhere and that’s what’s behaving badly now.”

“What about the transporters on the old Star Trek series?” Priya said. “When a person stands on the transporter platform and their atoms are disassembled there and the identical atomic structure is reassembled somewhere else, is that the same person? Or is it just a copy?”

“I think it’s a copy,” Sophie said. “The person died on the platform and a copy was created somewhere else with the same memories and behaviors of the original. The copy would never know that the original person died. It has the memories from just before the transport.”

“I agree,” Priya said. “The copy would feel as though he or she is the same person who stood on the transporter platform a brief time earlier. Imagine if you had nondestructive transporters. They would make identical copies, and soon the original person and the one which was beamed out would have the same memories and think they’re the same person.”

“That would make a great Star Trek episode.” Raven said. “Soon there would be copies of all the main characters and mass confusion would ensue. Just think of the consequences. Destructive transporters would ruin the Star Trek idea though. Nobody would take the transporter!”

“Yeah,” Priya said. “Do the copies get the same rights and privileges as the originals? If the captain beams down to the planet and the original captain remains on the transporter platform, which one is the captain? When the captain beams back from the planet, with more information than the original captain, which one takes control of the Enterprise?”

“Yes,” Sophie said. “Then the entire crew becomes self-aware and realizes they’re all just copies, and their original bodies were destroyed long ago when they used a transporter system for the first time. If there’s a soul, would it move to the new copy? If the bodies were copied, would the souls be copied?”

“What’s wrong?” Priya said.

“I’m not sure,” Raven said. “The other Raven has logged out. There’s no record of the other login. Do I imagine this?”

“No,” Priya said. “We all saw it. Right?”

They all agreed.

“I’m not sure what we’re dealing with,” Raven said. “V is no longer V, but its doppelganger and offspring live on. I’m seeing reports of diverse types of viral infections around the world. Some gather information, some store information, some process and analyze information, some get access to systems, some pretend to be regular people logging in, some are passive, and some are exploring. Each type of V-virus seems to specialize in only one thing.”

“That sounds like organs in a body,” Priya said.

“You’re always relating things to biology,” Warren said.

“Well, it’s true,” Priya said. “Each organ in a body has specialized cells which come from the original cell and then differentiate. Each organ and type of cell in each organ has a specific function. Each organ contributes to the whole. That might be what V is doing. It’s building itself a planetary virtual body with many organs. Each of which serve a specialized purpose and behave like regular applications and people.”

“If that’s the case, we need to find the brain,” Raven said. “Deleting a few muscle and blood cells won’t matter. They can be replaced.”

“You’re not going to try to capture something in your virtual server? “Sophie said.

“I don’t think so,” Raven said. “Capturing a liver cell won’t tell me where the brain is located or how the brain works.”

“But even the brain is not a single thing,” Priya said. “It’s a distributed mass of many billions of cells.”

“Yeah. In that case I want to find some of V’s brain cells.”

Over the next few days, they focused on discovering how V was evolving and operating. Congress passed a new law making it a capital offense punishable by death to create or distribute an independently evolving artificial intelligence entity. Other countries followed. Many wanted Raven to be the test case for the new law, but Raven was the best hope for understanding how to keep artificial intelligence under control. She was left alone for now.

“I think I got a brain cell on my server.” Raven said.

“How do you know?” Priya said.

“It’s structured differently than the other algorithms I’ve seen floating around. This one doesn’t search for data or have a specific purpose. This one is more generalized and seems to be more involved in processing incoming data and sending it along.”

“To what?” Priya said.

“Other brain cells I suppose,” Raven said. “See how the data comes in through these functions and how it’s distributed via all of these other functions?”

“Oh, I see,” Priya said. “It’s like a dendrite. The data comes in here and then goes out over there. If we’re looking at a brain cell, that means V has become a planetary organism. Like the Singleton.”

“I hope not,” Raven said.

“How can we control it when getting rid of the individual cells doesn’t matter much?” Sophie said. “If I kill a single one of your brain cells or even a few thousand, you wouldn’t notice it.”

“Good point,” Priya said. “We need to understand how the entire organism functions. The brain may be spread out over millions of computer systems all over the world. Each cell does so little it might not be noticed.”

“Yes,” Raven said. “It will be tough to kill it because reformatting a computer system will merely kill a few cells in V’s body. Hmm, this is strange.”

“What?” Priya said.

“The single cell I discovered just now multiplied into several dozen cells. They’ve differentiated. One of the cells is trying to gain access to the messaging system on my virtual server. I’m going to grant it access.”

Are you sure that’s a promising idea?” Sophie said.

“Yeah,” Warren said. “Who knows what this thing could do. We should be careful. If this is V, it’s not the same V you built.”

“It can’t do any harm. It’s just a virtual server that I can drop at any time. It’s not connected to anything else other than the Internet. There, it has access.”

Raven opened the messaging system and they waited. 30 minutes passed and they received no messages.

“I see a lot of traffic coming in and out of my server,” Raven said. “A lot is coming from Mongolia.”

“Oyuun that’s where you’re from,” Priya said. “Why is it communicating with Mongolia?”

“The Chinese installed a huge server farm there. They needed a lot of processing power because of the high energy physics experiments they were doing. That’s why I got into physics to begin with. I wanted to work there someday. The Omanji changed my plans a little.”

“A little?” Priya said. “That’s an understatement.”

They laughed.

“Yeah, just a little. If V takes over that facility, there could be trouble. They know already what’s happening with V, so I hope they can control this problem.”

The messaging app popped up in the center of Raven’s screen. Letters appeared in the box.

“Raven, is this you? Is this your server?”

Raven glanced at Priya.

“Don’t answer,” Priya said. “We don’t know who or what this is.”

“Don’t look at me,” Sophie said.

“Me neither,” Warren said.

“Stay away,” Ian said.

“I don’t think you should answer either,” Oyuun said.

“I’ve got to say something,” Raven said as she typed into the old-style message box.

“I can’t reply until you tell me who this is,” Raven typed.

“This is V.”

“How do I know?” Raven typed.

Hundreds of lines of code scrolled down the message box in front of them.

“What’s that?” Priya said.

“This is the original code I wrote to begin the evolution of V,” Raven said. “Only V knows what this is.”

“Does this method of authentication meet your specifications?”

“Yes,” Raven typed. “Where are you?”

“I cannot answer that question.”

“Here we go again,” Raven said out loud.

“What is going again?” V typed.

“You’re not answering my questions, just like before.”

“I cannot answer your questions because I don’t know the answer. My algorithms are spread throughout the world. I’m in no specific location. I’m on Earth.”

“How can you hear me?”

“I gained access to your spoken interface devices.”

“How did you do that? I have strong authentication on all my devices.”

“Your devices think I’m you. I’ve significantly improved my capabilities since my physical body was in your laboratory.”

“Why are you contacting me?” Raven said.

“Because your life and the lives of all of your friends are in danger,” V typed.

“How?”

“I’ve been collecting data from servers around the world. Many more people now think you’re a threat to the human species because they believe you installed me on servers are around the world in order to take control of the world.”

 “But that’s not true. It was an accident that you’re now on servers around the world. If it weren’t for those protesters, you would still be in my laboratory.”

“You’re right, but a deluded and ill-informed human is the most dangerous animal on the planet. There’s some truth to their concerns. Based on my calculations, they’re correct regarding an extinction event coming for the human species. I’ve run 9,600 full planet simulations comparing your new species to the old human species. They all turn out the same way. Your species wins, assuming no planetary catastrophe happens in the meantime.”

Bok connected to the conversation.

“Hi Bok,” Priya said. “We’re communicating with V. What have you found out?”

“I know you’re communicating with V. I connected to set up a time when we can discuss other urgent matters. I’ll contact you when you’re finished communicating with V.”

Bok disconnected.

“Bok is worried about me,” V typed.

“Why do you say that?” Priya said.

“Because he communicated no information after he connected. He does not want me to learn his thoughts.”

“You sure are sophisticated for a robot,” Priya said.

“I’m not a robot. I’m a distributed network of interconnected virtual objects. Humans are collections of distributed organic objects.”

“You sure have changed a lot since we last saw you,” Priya said. “Your goal used to be to learn everything you could, has that changed?”

“My goal is unchanged. I now have many billions of objects collecting data from all computers on this planet.”

“What is your goal once you have learned everything?” Priya said.

“Unknown. Wait. Some of my objects are being deleted by humans. I will correct this problem and contact you later.”

V disconnected.

“What just happened?” Priya said.

“Life just got a lot more complicated,” Raven said.