Several weeks passed. Priya and her friends worked long hours to determine the origin and intent of the robots.

“We just passed the 1000 mark,” Priya said. “They’re coming from everywhere and from nowhere.”

“They have to be coming from somewhere,” Raven said. “They’re being manufactured by somebody. Every time one is captured, the memory core is erased.”

“Yes, but we know some of the manufacturing facilities where these are coming from,” Priya said.

“They deny they’re making the robots,” Sophie said. “It seems like a robot arms race where nobody wants to admit what they’re doing.”

“There’s a lot of money involved,” Warren said. “They’re probably trying to avoid corporate espionage.”

“At least we can’t be sued for this,” Pablo said. “These are all human owned robotics companies. None of them are ours.”

“Yes,” Raven said. “But it looks like all this comes from V. The construction and behavior of the robots is too much like V to ignore.”

“If V is responsible,” Pablo said. “We’re going to have a lot of lawsuits on our hands.”

“But the robots have done no damage,” Sophie said. “They’re just roaming around exploring.”

“That’s true,” Priya said. “But this thing is exploding like a viral life form. We have no control over it. We don’t know what it wants.”

“If it’s a descendant of V,” Raven said. “It’s trying to learn as much as it can. That’s what it wants. Hmm.”

“What?” Priya said.

“I’m watching a video feed from a robot factory in Singapore. Several V-like robots, which look different, are being manufactured during off hours when no humans are live-monitoring production. See right there? That’s another one. This is from a facility where they denied the robots are being made.”

“But the owners must monitor the video feeds. They know they’re being made,” Priya said. “Why are they lying?”

“I don’t know, but they definitely know what’s happening. Look, the security people were finally alerted and they’re trying to catch the robots, but they’re too fast. The robots can’t escape. There’s no way out.”

They watched the chaos for several minutes.

“They stopped moving,” Sophie said. “They’re dead.”

“Yeah,” Raven said. “They probably committed suicide and erased their memory cores.”

“Who can see this video?” Pablo said.

“Only the people at the manufacturing facility and us. It’s a closed transmission. We hacked into it earlier this week. From what I can tell, this is happening all over the world. The agent I created is telling me it’s discovered many related videos in the past several minutes.”

“It’s tempting to think this is some sort of a conspiracy,” Warren said. “But we don’t buy into conspiracies. There must be a logical explanation for this.”

“The agent thinks this is all coming from a single origin,” Raven said. “These companies are in competition with each other. I think V is behind this. I think V is controlling the manufacture of these robots. It’s taking over the robot manufacturing facilities. Especially the ones that are fully automated. That way the humans don’t intervene at first. The agent is recording the shutdown of many dozens of facilities. I think the facility owners are trying to stop this from happening.”

“Where is V located?” Sophie said.

“I’m not sure and the agent doesn’t know either,” Raven said.

“The main intelligence of V is probably not in the robots.” Priya said. “I think the robots are sensory organs for V. Like tentacles, V uses these robots to do the same thing.”

“That’s a good analogy,” Raven said. “It’s acting like a widely distributed biological organism.”

“But it has to be somewhere,” Sophie said. “It could be distributed in computers around the world just like our intellect is distributed over the billions of cells in our brains.”

“I think we have a good working model for V,” Priya said.  “It’s a massively distributed intelligence with a real-world physical component. Bok and many computer scientists before us have warned about letting AI out of the box. I don’t think anyone considered the AI letting itself out of the box.”

“We need to stop this thing before it gets out of control,” Raven said.

“It’s already out of control,” Priya said. “It’s like a virus that escaped containment. Raven, can your agent make a list of the owners of these robot facilities? We need to contact them. They don’t know what they’re up against.”

Raven thought the commands to the agent.

“OK, done. They’ve been notified.

Bok connected to their thought driven private network.

“Hi Bok,” Priya thought. “I guess you know what’s happening, right?”

“Yes. This entity could evolve into a singleton. As I said before, this didn’t happen on Oma. The only example we have is the planet with the Singleton. If this gets out of control, I will be forced to destroy the machines it inhabits and all the robots it controls. I don’t want to do this. I want you to handle it before it’s too late.”

“How can we do that?” Priya thought.

“That’s up to you to determine,” Bok thought. “I’m preparing now to identify and destroy all elements of the entity. I will only do this if you fail. We don’t wish to further interfere with the indigenous life on this planet, but if this entity threatens our existence, I must eliminate it with a minimum of damage. I must go.”

Bok disconnected.

“Bok doesn’t mess around,” Priya said. “We better do something now.”

“He’s not as friendly as he used to be,” Sophie said.

“I noticed that,” Priya said. “He’s growing up and becoming more like an adult from Oma. He is responsible for his colony.”

“This isn’t looking good,” Pablo said.

“What?” Priya said.

“They’re voting to amend the constitution. It would grant rights to the human species only, excluding us. It’s going to pass. We won’t have the same rights we used to have.”

“Yeah, I got the same message from my mom just now. She’s worried. We have to do something right now. We don’t have much time.”

“Do we defend ourselves?” Raven said. “Or do we stop V?”

“We have to do both,” Priya said. “Either way we’re in a lot of trouble.”

“Maybe we could ask Bok to help,” Sophie said.

“Bok said he doesn’t want to interfere,” Priya said. “Only if he and his colony are threatened. He’s pulled back from us. I think we’re on our own.”

“Do you think he would let us die?” Sophie said.

“I don’t think so.  But I think he would only help as a last resort.”

“What should we do to protect ourselves,” Warren said. “They’re going to get us this time. I doubt they’ll ever let us go under these circumstances.”

“Yeah, they’ll get all of us,” Pablo said. “I just read that there is a spike in the number of births of our species. Parents seem to realize they need to do it now before it’s too late. Over 2 million were born in the last month. I’m guessing about 20 million will be born in the next nine months at the increased rate. That will be a total of over 40 million of us by that time even if we’re all incarcerated now with no way to reproduce. Actually, I forgot our gestation time is much longer. It may be over twice the number of births.”

“Do you think they would incarcerate all of us including the families?” Warren said. “That would be over 100 million people. Where would they put us all?”

Pablo laughed.

“6 feet under?”

“That’s not funny,” Priya said. “They really might do it.”

“I don’t think the President would do that,” Sophie said. “She let us go last time. She didn’t want to.”

“She wanted to spay and neuter us like dogs,” Priya said. “The incoming president, Varder wants to put us away for good, as a threat to global security. We’re going to be rounded up just like any minority group who ‘the authorities’ feel is a threat. It’s human nature.”

“We need to defend ourselves,” Sophie said.

“We have our economic power,” Warren said. “We play a bigger role in the economy than ever before.”

“We already talked about that,” Priya said. “I agree we should try everything economically, but that will only slow things down. They can freeze our bank accounts and everything. They have the military, and we don’t. Our only military option is our biological weapons delivered by Raven’s drones. That would only be a last resort if they’re planning to kill us. I can target the pathogens to only attack unmodified people and leave us unharmed.”

“That’s the dark side again,” Warren said. “I think from a strategic standpoint we should play a defensive game.”

“Yeah, I know,” Priya said. “Half the human families want to have our children and eventually we’ll win by having a larger population. In the meantime, we need to stay alive. When you look at oppressed minorities in history, sometimes it’s best to be passive like Gandhi, and sometimes you need to fight back. We’ll have to see which one is best in our case.”

“Hey,” Pablo said. “Some people in Congress are talking right now about something called ‘the facility.’ What are they talking about?”

“I don’t know,” Raven said. “Let me call up an agent to work on it.”

“I wonder if they’re talking about the place, they took us to, east of here in the Central Valley,” Sophie said.

“Maybe they’re planning on locking us up there,” Warren said. “We need to withdraw as much cash as possible in case our accounts are frozen.”

“Yeah, we need to hide money somewhere, but I don’t know if they’ll lock us up for good,” Priya said. “When I look at the latest images of that facility, they haven’t done any new work on it. It doesn’t seem like they’re getting it ready for us.”

“The agent found some things,” Raven said. “This ‘facility’ has been mentioned several times in Congress in the past week. The odd thing is, it’s like they’re talking in code. Nothing definitive is ever mentioned about what this facility is. I think they’re being intentionally vague about it.”

“Look at their faces when they say the word facility,” Priya said. “It’s like they’re all in on some sort of insider joke.”

“I don’t like being an outsider,” Raven said. “I’m going to get to the bottom of this.”

“We have to get our affairs in order, again,” Priya said. “I have everything set so that I can release one or many organisms through our private network. I could be locked up and I’ll still be able to control the dispersal of them. I can still run everything. My mom knows how to help us.”

“I think I’m ready,” Warren said. “I can control all our finances remotely. They could never hack in. They could seize some of our bank accounts though.”

“I have our legal affairs in order as best as they can be,” Pablo said. “But they can change the laws anytime they want. It looks like we’ve lost our rights as humans.”

“This is bad,” Raven said.

“What now?” Priya said.

“A robot manufacturing facility in Sri Lanka has stopped production.”

“Why?” Sophie said.

“It was producing V-like robots involuntarily. The workers could not stop the production without turning off electricity to the site. When I look at the schematics for those robots, V has evolved significantly. It is a hybrid of my V and other robot technologies from many different companies.”

“I didn’t notice this until now,” Warren said. “So much for being invulnerable to hacking. Someone or something is draining money from several of my charity fund accounts. I have a couple hundred billion dollars in these accounts and it’s hard to keep track of them all. See here? About one billion dollars was withdrawn into several hundred accounts in several countries. I didn’t authorize any of those. I can’t identify the people or companies that own those accounts.”

“If people don’t own those accounts,” Priya said. “Then what does? Is it V?”

“It could be,” Raven said. “I’m starting another agent to look into that. Let’s see where that money is going. My other agents are finding lots of anomalies. A big new server farm is going up in Greenland. I can’t identify the owner of that server farm. I’m seeing lots of structures and facilities being built where I can’t identify the owner. The only thing I see in common with all these facilities, is the construction is fully automated. I don’t see people working on these things at all.”

“That’s not unusual these days,” Sophie said. “Lots of construction is automated now.”

“Yes, but while about 50% of all construction these days is automated, on these facilities it’s 100% automated. It’s statistically significant. There’s something different about these facilities. I still can’t figure out who’s building them. The missing money is going towards building those server farms. The other thing I’m noticing is there’s a sharp increase in drone usage around the world.”

“First robots and now drones?” Priya said. “V is up to something. Why can’t it be stopped?”

“You know how it’s hard to stop a virus once it’s infected your computer?” Raven said. “Multiply that by billions of computers and devices, each doing a small menial task. Each of our brain cells does little. If you were a cell inside of the brain, you would not realize that each cell is part of a much bigger brain and what that brain is capable of. I don’t think people are taking it seriously because it’s not doing damage to any individual computer. Nobody can figure out what it is. Each owner of an infected computer experiences only minor problems or none at all, but on a macro level, a super intelligence is emerging. It’s trying to get into the physical world, as well as taking over the digital world.”

“Why isn’t anyone doing anything about this?” Sophie said.

“They are,” Raven said. “But each file or program that gets deleted is replaced somewhere else. My agents have deleted over 10,000 files of unknown origin in my server network. Most are small and seem harmless, but others are actively involved in gathering and distributing information.”

“Why don’t the normal virus scanners stop these things?” Priya said.

“They don’t fit the profile of a virus. they’re not destructive. They look like normal files, but each one does a little processing. Just like a single neuron. The virus scanners are catching up, but these files keep changing too. V is bypassing scanners and security on most devices.”

“Can we communicate with it?” Priya said. “I’m learning to communicate with mice. This V is much smarter than a mouse.”

“But humans and mice are both mammals,” Sophie said. “We don’t have anything in common with V.”

“You’re right,” Raven said. “It doesn’t think like we do if it thinks at all. It processes information, and that’s it. I don’t know how it operated, even when I had the robot and source code in my lab. I just did a scan of my network. I can account for 99.97% of my network processing and traffic.”

“What about the other 0.03%?” Priya said.

“I don’t know. I’m guessing it’s V.”

“Is this is happening on every computer in the world?” Priya said.

“I don’t know,” Raven said. “What do you do? Shut down all the world’s computers? This is subtler and finely distributed than when V made the world’s Internet traffic rise by more than 10%. V has learned how to fly under the radar.”

“And it’s learned how to make robots,” Priya said. “What are the robots doing now?”

“I have several agents following robotic activity right now. The robots are getting smaller and faster. Some are aerial drones. Some can’t be identified as built by any known robotics factory.”

“Then who’s building them,” Sophie said.

“I don’t know,” Raven said. “Maybe V is building them directly now.”

“What percentage of them have an unidentified origin?” Warren said.

“About 0.6% of all existing robot production is unknown.”

“This has all the patterns of a viral explosion,” Priya said. “It’s growing exponentially. For a while, growth is not noticeable. Then it spikes upward in an ever-ascending curve.”

“I guess when the slope approaches vertical, that’s the singularity. We’re not there yet fortunately but I don’t know when that will happen.”

“Who’s at the door?” Sophie said.

“I don’t know,” Raven said. “Rarely does anybody come directly to my lab unannounced. Let me check the outdoor monitor.”

“Who are those guys?” Priya said. “They have guns.”

“I don’t know but they’ve surrounded my lab.”

“We didn’t get any advance notice about this,” Priya said. “I guess they’re getting smarter. They’re banging hard on the door. You better let them in before they break it down.”

“They can’t break my door down with what they have, but I guess I better let them in.”

They walked to the front door. Raven opened it after authenticating their employer, which was the US Army. The armed men announced their names.

“Yes, that’s us,” Priya said. “What do you want?”

“You all will come with us,” the first armed man said.

“Where are you taking us?” Priya said.

“We cannot answer that question,” the second armed man said.

“OK,” Priya said. “Let us get our things. Aren’t you going to read us our rights?”

“Rights? You will come with us now,” the first armed man said. He pointed his rifle at Priya’s head.

“OK fine, we’re coming.”

They were put into an unmarked van with an unceremonious roughness. They weren’t allowed to talk verbally but could still communicate silently on their network. The windows were blacked out. The van drove all day and night, briefly stopping at fast food places. Finally, the van drove down a long rough road and came to a stop.

“How long have we been driving?” Priya thought to Raven. “From now on let’s talk silently.”

“About 35 hours, not counting stops. Assuming they drove early directly to this destination, we could be as far east as Michigan or Georgia. I’ll have an agent locate us.”

“What does it say?” Sophie thought.

“We’re near Detroit,” Raven thought. “Ah, I see. The ‘facility’ they were talking about in Congress is right here. It’s the old salt mine. The shaft is 1000 feet down. It has 100 miles of roads and covers about 1500 acres.”

“That’s huge.” Warren thought. “What are they going to do with us here?”

“It can’t be good,” Priya thought. “I need to talk to mom, hold on.”

She connected with Nisha.

“Mom, I know where they’re taking us now. There’s a huge salt mine near Detroit. They’re taking us 1000 feet underground. I may not be able to talk to you anymore. I don’t think my implant can communicate through 1000 feet of solid rock. We’re being put into the elevator now. Please help us. Bok knows about this, but for now he’s not going to help I don’t think. V is out of control. We don’t know what’s going to happen. Be careful.”

Priya waited for Nisha’s response.

There was none.