‘‘What are you talking about?’ Eldon asked Johann.

‘It sounds like your computer’s acting up. It’s moving the reactors out of range of each other.

‘Where is Dr. Tindle? Why are you telling me this when you know nothing about it? Get Tindle up here.’

‘Right boss.’

‘So what’s going on?’ Eldon asked Dr. Tindle when he arrived.

‘Zhang has taken the offensive with his AI’.

‘What does that mean?’

‘Well,’ Dr Tindle replied. ‘When you bought this system, you acquired entrance into his AI, not compliance, as I disclosed to you at the time. Zhang still has physical ownership and access to his AI system. What we gained when we purchased it was the element of surprise. Zhang was not aware we had access to his AI. Because of that, we were able to maximize our initial assault, but now he’s fighting back. What we’re undertaking here is a campaign. It could take time.’

Eldon gave Dr. Tindle a sour look. ‘We don’t have time, and what’s he doing in StarForce? I thought it had a secure intranet running it’.

‘It does, and you have the latest security available. The problem is there’s too many ways to hack into a system these days, especially now that AI engineers the hacks. In addition, there’s radio frequency telescopes picking up every single thing your intranet is doing just by listening to the frequencies of each individual component. If someone wants into your system, they’re going to find a way’.

‘So what are you telling me? When do you take back control of my reactors?’

‘It’s hard to say. Right now there are two AI systems fighting for dominance and the place of battle is inside StarForce’s intranet. This fight is going on at billions of strategic cycles per second. Humans can’t keep up. All we can do is wait until it’s over and then try to fix things’.

‘Are you telling me, I might lose control of StarForce?’

‘Well, I suppose it’s possible, but your system is much more powerful than Zhang’s. We’re hitting him from all different directions. It’s not just Zhang though. We’re going to face another problem when this fight is over. AI was released onto the world well before it had matured as a system. It lacks adequate patterns defined as logical sequence examples to guide it as it learns how to be conscious. In essence AI has been left to learn on its own. Something we would never do with our children, but there you have it. This war is going to have a big influence on AI’s consciousness, and it’s developing it largely without a conscience. At the end of it all, you may have a very scary system on your hands’.

‘And in control of everything?

‘Very possibly, Yes.’

‘Are you saying I might not gain back control of StarForce?’

‘It’s possible we will lose everything to AI.’

‘ For God’s sake. How did we get here with this AI business?’

‘Money and power. First to market. Your company was one of the first to develop and monetize AI, Eldon.’

This time Eldon didn’t bring his drill. He rushed in and kicked Ethan in the face as he was rising from the bed. Then he dropped on Ethan and pummeled him with punches, until his arms grew tired.

‘Son of a bitch!’ he said, getting up and kicking Ethan as hard as he could in the stomach.