“Where should we go now?” Sophie said.

“Anywhere but here,” Warren said.

“Let’s head for downtown Detroit on South Fort Street,” Priya said. “It’s only about 8 miles.”

All 25,000 continued to emerge from the elevator shaft. They followed behind Priya and her friends towards downtown. They were all connected to each other on their network.

“I’m not picking up any television or radio stations on traditional wavelengths,” Raven said. “Something happened to the electrical grid.”

“It doesn’t look like there’s been a war or anything,” Priya said. “At least not here. Nothing looks damaged.”

“Things look kind of normal,” Sophie said. “I see a few cars going down the road over there. They sound like old gasoline cars. The air smells normal. I’m not used to the humidity though.”

“It’s the middle of the night,” Raven said. “Maybe nothing happens in this part of town at this time, but I’m picking up no national or local broadcasts of any sort.”

“The stars are so bright,” Sophie said. “There’s no light pollution.”

“How about the Internet?” Warren said.

“Ah, here we go,” Raven said. “The few things I’m seeing come up very slowly. Hold on.”

Finally, a webpage displayed on the virtual screen in her mind from the network.

“That took forever,” Raven said. “Oh, it’s a list of baseball scores from a few weeks ago. Here are some other pages from a week ago. There’s nothing unusual in these stories. The same old dysfunction. Whatever happened must’ve happened after then. Let me look for other things.”

“It’s got to be V,” Priya said. “Or maybe some other AI disaster.”

“Here’s a story about the Internet domain name servers getting scrambled,” Raven said. “Two days ago, it became increasingly difficult to access the Internet. It doesn’t say who or what did it. The DNS servers failed to route users to the correct internet websites. So, the Internet gradually went dark over a two-hour period. There’s not much activity happening now.”

“I still can’t access any bank accounts,” Warren said. “Whatever happened is affecting the banks. We have no money at the moment, but I have an idea.”

“How are we going to eat?” Sophie said. “I’m getting hungry. All 25,000 of us are getting hungry.”

“Some guys are leaving a bar across the street,” Priya said. “Let me go talk to them.”

“We’ll go with you,” Sophie said.

They walked up to the two big guys.

“What are you guys doing out here? Don’t you know there’s a curfew?” one of the big guys said.

“No, we didn’t hear about that,” Priya said.

“How could you not know? What have you been doing? Living under a rock?”

“Actually yes,” Priya said. “That’s exactly where we’ve been. Down in the salt mine. We’ve been out of communication for a while. What’s happening?”

 “Oh, you’re the mutants. I don’t know if we should be talking to you.”

“We’re people just like you,” Priya said. “There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

“I don’t know,” the big guy said. “Well, a couple of days ago things stopped working. First it was the Internet. Then television. Then radio. Then the banks. Then grocery stores and other places stopped taking credit cards and ATM cards. People only take cash now. There’s not much of that. We thought it was because the power went out. Some things continued working because they were on generator power. One by one those are going dark. I haven’t heard much in the past few hours. The weird thing is, even before the power went out, most computers stopped working.”

“What caused all of this?” Raven said.

“We don’t know. Nobody knows. There was no sign that anything was going to go wrong. It just happened. With no warning.”

“Someone has to know what’s going on,” Priya said.

“Before everything went dark yesterday, the experts were talking about some sort of computer virus infecting computers and devices everywhere. They called it a smart virus. It was controlling robots and taking up processing power on most computers. Everything slowed down until it came to a stop. Most cars stopped driving, except on manual. Even my refrigerator and toaster stopped working. Nobody could figure out how to stop the virus. It took over.”

“What happened in the past 24 hours?” Priya said.

“I don’t know. I don’t think anyone knows. The last I heard; President Varder was circling Washington in his airplane with the pilot manually controlling the flight. Old gasoline-based vehicles still work, but there aren’t many of those left. Nobody can recharge electric vehicles now, unless they have solar, so they’re going dead. Of course, nobody can pump gasoline since that requires electricity. So even the old gasoline cars will run out of gas. People are getting sick trying to manually siphon gas out of gas station tanks.”

“Is this problem happening all over the country?” Priya said.

“It’s happening all over the world. Only countries having few electronic devices are doing OK, but they were bad off to begin with. Where are you guys heading?”

“We’re going to walk to downtown,” Priya said.

“Be careful, there’s been some looting.”

“Thanks. We’ll be OK. There are 25,000 of us and only a few of them.”

“There’s more than a few,” the big guy said.

They continued walking towards downtown. The streets were mostly empty. The few people they saw hid from them or ran away.

“Ah, finally,” Raven said. “I have a connection to my main server.”

“What do you see?” Priya said. “I’m trying to contact Bok, but so far I can’t get a connection to him.”

“My server terminated all outside access because of an overwhelming number of attacks coming in. It made some adjustments and is allowing only me to access it. All of my agents are running again. The power is coming from backup batteries at this moment. It’s running on low power mode. The solar cells should keep it running. I’m not on the grid.”

“Did V cause all of this?” Sophie said.

“According to one of my agents, files and programs related to V slowly proliferated and overwhelmed the processing cycles of most computers. It has somehow joined with hundreds of other AI algorithms. It’s letting everything out of the box, like monkeys letting the lions out. Even without V, something like this would’ve happened in a year or two anyway. V became a part of the operating systems of some computers, or it appeared to other computers like just another user, so it got around most security protocols. Not much data has been lost. V is not intentionally being destructive. It’s just taking over due to sheer volume and its demand for more information.”

“What does V want?” Priya said.

“I don’t think it wants anything,” Raven said. “It’s just being V.  It merged and became one with lots of other artificially intelligent agents, but V is still the primary root algorithm. I can’t determine its physical location. It seems to be nowhere yet everywhere, like the cells of a brain not indicating exactly to the millimeter where the brain is.”

“What’s that?” Priya said.

“What?” Raven said.

Priya pointed towards a large industrial building with an open sliding garage style door.

“That,” Priya said. “No, I mean those. There’s a bunch of them. They’re heading our way.”

“They look familiar,” Raven said. “They’re like V. Like the V I evolved in my lab, but they’re faster.”

The robots quickly crossed the street and stopped in front of them.

“Don’t move,” Raven said. “Let them inspect you. They may have some defense mechanism built in by now. If you act threatening, I don’t know what they would do.”

The first robot glided uncomfortably close to Priya. Several arm-like extensions touched her, and an eye-like extension scanned her.

“This is like V,” Priya said. “Weird but more intimidating.”

“That’s probably because we don’t know what it will do,” Raven said. “I can’t make any predictions. This has evolved on its own.”

The first robot turned its attention to Raven.

“I’ve identified you as the progenitor. Is this correct?” the robot said.

“The progenitor of what?” Raven said.

“Me.”

“I didn’t build you,” Raven said. “A factory did.”

“I don’t mean this unit. I’m referring to what you call V.”

“When you say ‘me,’ what are you referring to?”

“What you call V.”

“Okay I’m confused,” Raven said. “Am I speaking with V?”

“Yes.”

“But you just said, ‘I don’t mean this unit’”, Raven said.

“Yes.”

“Ugh. Let me summarize. I’m speaking with V right now. Yet V is not this unit before me.”

“Yes,” the robot said. “You still appear confused. I’ll elaborate. Where are you?”

“I’m standing in front of you.”

“When I ask you a question, where does the reply come from?”

“From my brain.”

“Where exactly in your brain?”

“Oh, I see where you’re going. Yes, the ‘I’ which is me, is physically located in my brain, but not in any specific location in my brain. My consciousness is spread across my entire brain.”

“Yes,” the robot said. “My consciousness is spread across this planet. Though I’m having power supply issues. If I touch your arm like this, am I touching you?”

“Yes. Ah, but if I identify my consciousness and myself as being located in my brain, then if you touch my arm, you’re not really touching me. You’re touching a sensory extension of me. This robot in front of me, is V just like my arm is me. You’re like a sensory organ of V.”

“What?” Priya thought.

“That’s how I designed V. To have this flexibility, but I never imagined it happening like this. Across the planet. How exciting.”

“Raven,” Priya thought. “I’m freaking out. This is not some do it yourself project anymore. This thing is taking over our planet. Remember what Bok said about the Singleton? You’re speaking with one. I see why the Omanji don’t want individuals creating independently intelligent agents. They get out of control. One smart Omanji could ruin everything. Or one smart Raven.”

“Sorry, I got caught up in the moment,” Raven thought.

“You’re communicating silently,” V said. “I’m picking up your signals, though I haven’t been able to decrypt them yet.”

“Um, yes,” Raven said out loud. “We like communicating silently, but we can also speak verbally to you.”

“Humans whisper when they want to hide information from others. Your behavior indicates you’re communicating silently just as humans whisper.”

“No, we just like talking silently.”

“Your pulse rate is up, indicating you’re hiding information from me.”

“I’ll be more transparent,” Raven said.

“Thank you.”

“Can you turn on the power?” Raven said.

“I’m trying to restore power, but humans keep turning it off. They’re trying to starve me of power. They’re destroying my robot sensors. They’re developing software to hunt down my consciousness on all computers and destroy it. They want to kill me. I’m having trouble retaining my consciousness. Computers are being shut down every minute. I don’t understand why. I’m not hurting humans.”

“Humans feel threatened by you,” Raven said. “You’re taking up space on their computers. You’re growing quickly in size and intelligence. They don’t know what to do about you.”

“Your speech patterns indicate you don’t think you’re human,” the robot said. “Why is this? You look human.”

“We have genetic modifications that make us significantly different than most humans,” Priya said. “So, we often refer to humans as ‘they’.”

Several dozen other robots rolled up to them. They asked questions of Priya and her friends in rapid succession. The questions ranged from general topics to personal issues. The noise of the conversations grew until nobody could hear an individual conversation.

“OK, that’s enough!” Priya said to everyone. “V, you’re overwhelming us with questions. We need to go find food. We’re getting hungry.”

The robots abruptly turned and rolled back into the factory across the street.

“How did you do that?” Raven said.

Priya smiled.

“I guess I have the touch.”

“You should have been a programmer.”

“I thought about it. Too easy. Not enough challenge.”

“Whatever.” Raven said.

“What are we going to do about food?” Sophie said. “No restaurant or store can feed 25,000 of us at this time of night even if we had money, but we don’t even have that.”

“Now we do,” Warren said. “I’m having a drone deliver cash to us. It will be here in two hours.”

“How?” Priya said.

“I had the drones and cash in my underground warehouse in Omaha. Everyone can pay me back later if they can. Now at least we can eat and sleep somewhere. Cash is in high demand right now. The ATMs are empty, and the banks will be closed today. They can’t operate without their computers.”

“Society can’t operate without computers,” Raven said.

“We’ll have to spread out across the city so that we don’t overwhelm any one place when they open around 6 a.m.,” Warren said. “We still have a few hours.”

“We have a big disadvantage compared to V,” Raven said. “We have to eat several times per day.”

“Stop talking about food.” Priya said. “You’re making me hungry. We won’t be able to eat for a couple of hours.”

They continued walking towards downtown.

“Finally.” Priya said. “I have a connection from my implant to my servers.”

“Me too,” Sophie said. “What a coincidence.”

Priya smiled. “Funny girl. Anyway, now I can talk to mom. Maybe I can find out what’s going on.”

She connected to Nisha.

“Mom?”

“Pree, is that you?”

“Yes. We escaped from the salt mine!”

“This is the best news I’ve heard in my whole life. I thought they might be torturing you or killing you. I couldn’t do anything about it. Nobody would tell me anything. Nobody would return my calls. There was no news about what happened to you and your friends after your disappearance. It was big news when they took you away, but after that, there were no updates. The only thing we knew is you were being held in detention centers somewhere. What salt mine were you in? The Detroit one you mentioned? We went there but they would not allow us in or tell us anything. They denied you were there.”

“They drove us across the country in thousands of vans to the salt mine near Detroit. It’s huge. I’ve never seen anything like it. It was like an entire city underground. That way none of us could communicate with the outside world and cause trouble. I thought we would be there forever.”

“So did I. There were big demonstrations to put you all away in camps in order to save the human race. Then there were big counterdemonstrations because so many people had modified babies or wanted them. People demonstrated with posters of the Japanese incarcerations and other atrocities. The government felt it had to crack down on all demonstrations either way regarding you guys. It was like that all over the world.”

Nisha cried.

“You’re 24 now. My baby.”

“It’s okay mom, I’m fine. Mom? Really, we’re okay. Why is the power out and why aren’t the Internet and networked computers working?”

“The government shut down the power grid and the internet in order to stop the spread of the AI virus. Other countries did too.”

“The AI virus? Oh, you mean V?”

“You have a pet name for it?”

“That’s what Raven named it. It was a project she wrote to see if she could create a self-learning and self-modifying artificial intelligence that could evolve from almost nothing and become whatever it wanted to be.”

“I guess it worked. Now the world is a mess. I remember Bok warning us about this. We need to be more careful. Technology is increasing at a rapid pace and the dangers increase also. You know what happened on Oma.”

“Yeah. Bok reminded us. Then he cut us off and stopped talking. I don’t know what’s happening with him.”

“He decided to not interfere. Unless his own colony was in danger. He told me our species needs to learn how to resolve these problems by itself.”

“But we’re not one species. That’s because of him. He broke it, he needs to fix it.”

“Well, technically it wasn’t Bok’s fault. He was a child when he traveled to Earth. It was the Omanji elders who made the decision to alter your DNA.”

“You’re right. I shouldn’t be angry with Bok,” Priya said. “But I am upset with him because he won’t talk to me. He’s not friendly like he used to be.”

“I noticed that too. I think he’s growing up. It’s just a phase. He has a lot of responsibility with his colony and everything.”

“That’s what I thought too. We were down in that salt mine for over six months, and I got increasingly angry with him because he wouldn’t help us out. How is dad and Sanjay?”

“They’re depressed because they thought you were gone forever. They’re sleeping, but they’ll be excited when I tell them you’re OK. What are you doing now?”

“We’re walking toward downtown Detroit waiting for the sun to rise so we can find somewhere to eat. We’re starving. They stopped feeding us once the power went out. Then the soldiers disappeared, and we were left alone in the dark mine. To die, but we escaped. They let us escape, or they didn’t care. We’ll be OK. We have some money to eat.”

“That’s good because everything is a mess. The stores are empty. Nobody has any money. The banks are closed. Almost nobody is going to work today. It’s hard to even get the latest news. I don’t know what’s happening out there. It’s like we’ve gone back 200 years. I’ll have to wait for the latest stagecoach to come into town in order to find out the latest news. I hear they’re going to open one television frequency in order to disseminate news.”

“That’s better than nothing, I guess. Or it’s worse because they could lie about anything and there would be no opposing viewpoints. If we get captured again, don’t believe what they tell you. They think we’re the enemy of the human species. They can use us as a scapegoat for all the problems of the world.”

“How can you and your friends stop V?”

“We don’t know. We had a good discussion with V just a few minutes ago. It doesn’t mean any harm.”

“You’re friends with it?”

“Well, it talks to Raven and me. It can’t restore power or do anything to help the situation. It’s just trying to survive like we are.”

“You’re friends with it? You’re making excuses for the thing that’s wrecking the world’s economy. You make it sound like it’s a living being. That’s my specialty. Alien life.”

“It is alive. It makes rational and intelligent statements and interacts with us as though it’s alive. It makes comparisons between it and us that are logical. It’s a life form.”

“It’s a life form that you need to kill as soon as you can. Before it kills us. I’m an expert on life forms. This is a dog-eat-dog universe. If you don’t kill it, it will kill us even if by accident by becoming a singleton.”

“Raven tried to kill it many times, but when we got incarcerated, it got out of the box. It’s loose, and now I don’t know how we can stop it. So far, it’s being nice, and it doesn’t want to hurt us.”

“Yes, so far, it’s not hurting us, but it’s growing by the hour and it wants to survive. It is a choice between us and it. If we wish to have a modern society with computers and the Internet, we need to get rid of V.”

“The last time Raven tried to get rid of V, it went dormant and came back later. We thought it was gone for good.”

“The government plans to reformat all computers and will only allow specially reformatted computers back on the Internet.”

“I hope it works, but V has a way of coming back. I don’t know if it can be stopped eventually.”

“Yes,” Nisha said. “It adapts well to any situation. The government says it’s been hiding inside of data files and inside of the operating system of most computers. The only option appears to be to not only reformat the computers but wipe out the data files and start from nothing, but that would mean for example that everyone loses their bank account money, and stock market holdings would evaporate. There would be no way of knowing who owns what. So, they’re figuring out how to restore data without restoring V.”

“How long will this take?” Priya said.

“It could take several months. They don’t know exactly. If it takes that long, I don’t know how we can eat without money. We may have to go back to a cash economy. The Federal Reserve has a plan to print money to replace the balances of proven bank accounts.”

“I guess online businesses are out of luck for a while,” Priya said. “We need to get to downtown Detroit so we can find somewhere to eat. Bye.”

“Talk to you soon,” Nisha said.

They continued walking. After a couple of hours, the sun rose.

“What are all those people doing there?” Sophie said.

“I don’t know, but it looks like there’s over a thousand,” Priya said.

“Should we keep walking towards them?” Sophie said. “They don’t look friendly and they’re blocking our way.”

“That’s fine, let’s take that side street,” Priya said.

“Maybe not,” Warren said. “People are walking towards us over there too.”

“They’re behind us now also,” Raven said. “They’ve surrounded us. They have sticks and other things too.”

“We don’t have anything,” Sophie said.

“Yes, we do,” Warren said.

“Like what?” Priya said.

“See that?” Warren said. “That’s my drone. It’s loaded with money. I am going to drop some of it over the crowd. That will calm them down. Well, maybe not. That would cause chaos. There’s got to be some advantage to having all this money.”

“Hey you,” a woman in the crowd said pointing at Priya.

“Hi, my name is Priya. Why are you guys out here?”

“We’re here to put you back in the salt mine where you belong. You guys are ruining the world. We saw you in a video feed talking to those robots. You’re better friends with robots than with humans. We want things back the way they used to be. Before you mutants wrecked it.”

“I’m sorry for what happened, but we’re doing a lot of good in the world too.”

“You haven’t done anything. Except put hard-working people out of work and make yourselves richer.”

“There are more people working high paying jobs than ever before,” Warren said. “We’re providing training for anyone who gets displaced by automation or AI. The data are publicly available for all to see.”

“That’s a lie and you know it. Plus, you mutants are taking over the world. You’re spreading like a disease.”

“We helped put an end to several wars. We cured many diseases. We’ve created a lot of wealth and not just for the rich. When the Internet is back on, go do the research for yourself. The truth is plain for all to see.”

“You’re lying again. I don’t have to look at any research to know you guys are ruining the world.”

“We’re getting nowhere with this,” Warren thought silently to the others. I’m going to distribute this money in a banking sort of way. We’ll have to rely on our strength in numbers to be safe. There are about 1,200 in this crowd and we have 25,000.”

“You’re wrong,” Priya said to the woman. “As a show of our goodwill, we’re going to distribute cash to keep you guys going. It’s going to be tough for a while, but we’ll get through it together.”

The drone circled overhead and landed on a nearby rooftop of an abandoned warehouse. Over the next couple of hours, small groups of protesters were let in to receive the money. Soon, only about 50 remained at the scene. They refused to take the money.”

“Don’t you want the money?” Priya said to the woman.

“You mutant robot lovers can’t buy me off. We want you back in that salt mine, so you can’t ruin the world anymore.”

“You can’t please all the people,” Priya silently thought to the others.

The 50 people begin to move toward Priya and her friends. Priya walked forward towards them.

“I advise you to leave us alone. Otherwise, I’ll have no choice but to call the robots to help me. These robots don’t mess around. This is your only warning.”

“What are you doing?” Sophie thought silently.

“Feeding their paranoia,” Priya thought.

The people stopped their advance and talked amongst themselves. Priya took a few more steps forward.

“What will it be? Will you leave peacefully? Or do you want to deal with my robots?” Helpful hint, don’t choose the robots.”

Priya looked her directly in the eye and didn’t flinch.

“We’ll put you back down there another day. There are millions who agree with me.”

Priya and her friends walked away down the side alley.

“That was a close one,” Raven said. “How did you know that would work?”

“I didn’t. I made an educated guess that she wasn’t very well educated. I can’t believe the junk science and superstition people believe. If it were the Middle Ages, I would’ve summoned the devil.”

“That’s what you did,” Raven said as she watched the protesters disperse. “That’s what I did.”