Rough Draft Tunnel Rat Chapter 88 (Patreon)

Milo sat waiting for people and an AI to show up on the screen. What could he expect now? His mind kept spinning off into scenarios of questions aske, questions answered. He'd filled most of the time since the last meeting researching everything he could on AI.

With six search engines of his design finding articles and putting them on screen for him to read, he had gone through a large amount of material very quickly. His search engines were smart and they learned. If an article had very little new information, only that info was given to him to read. Interesting and intelligent people got researched as well, to judge the value of their work and opinions.

He was amazed at how many people had plagerized other people's work and not credited them. He set up another program to list all of the papers that stole others' work, document who the original authors were, and provide proof of what they had done. It was sloppy of them. Anyone could have figured it out. Then he sent the complete file of 137 academics who had written 515 papers on Artificial Intelligence, and stolen at least part of their work, to many places. Each of the plagerized authors got a copy, along with the thieves. Some people were both. Then he sent the file to 200 major universities and technical journals. Might as well be thourough.

As the hours ticked down, he studied each of the known AI, their purpose, creators, and what was known of their kernels. Wally was an open book, and Milo had already read about his kernel and creation. But many others were less known. CHARLIE had been created to help the IRS in North America collect taxes, primarily from the rich and corporations. When the AI was asked why he went after them, he quoted John Dillinger: "Because that's where the money is".

THEA and ALBERT were a team of AI that tracked and eliminated cyber-crime. Each had a different search style, which he found interesting, but both used appearances taken from 1930 detective movies. They created a unique NFT of a Maltese Falcon and took turns hiding it from each other in the internet. Milo briefly scanned the movie that referenced, and put it aside for when he had a lot of time. Nothing in it looked very familiar to him.

Other AI had been research academics, economists, advisors to corporations and presidents. What Milo noticed was that each and every one of them had a distinct personality. He pondered that, and also what their objectives were. All the AI were task oriented. They liked to work. Surpisingly, 73% of them created games for humans to play. Humans studying the phenomena wrote endless books about this.

The most intriguing AI was LLAMA. He was created with a sole purpse of causing havoc and tearing down the internet. He created an endless stream of self-replicating and mutating viruses to disguise his work. It was ages before KITT got close enough to realize it was another AI. It took nearly all the existing AI to set up a trap for LLAMA, and destroy it. Milo was curious what his kernel looked like. Once discovered, LLAMA left messages for the others, taunting them and leavy snarky messages. Even today, LLAMA was still a popular meme on the datanet. Milo found millions of different memes with a sarcastic message and a picture of a llama. LLAMA had left a string of his own memes for the other AI, the main one being simply a picture of an ugly cartoon llama hitting itself in the head and saying 'Bad llama'. Milo wondered which came first? The meme, or the name?

This meeting could go so many ways. If they had found evidence of what had happened and believed him, which he had to have verified by Wally, then he might go back to the world. If they still suspected that he was the one tampering with the machine code, then he couldn't. If one person could trap him, then another could as well.

He wondered about simply buying another pod and having it shipped to a false address. He'd also have to do something about his medical records, which might include his DNA. Did the pod read brainwaves? Something to look into. It might be quite hard to use another pod at this point. Maybe he would go the other way and sneak back in. That would be dangerous, but appealed to him more. Pitting himself against the humans assisting the AI.

He broke off that line of thinking. Going to far down that route might bias him to what was said at the meetings. And really, if he had his choice, he wanted to just be left alone to play the game and explore its secrets. What leverage did he have to offer to get that?

Acting on a stray thought, he wrote a synopsis of several things, explaining quite a few things that he suspected the dev team wouldn't want to be widely known: Thousands of people enslaved to work in the world, and many deaths from faulty pods. Organized crime using the game to profit. Poor gamers with their minds trapped in a world that tortured them. He let himself go a bit wild with the descriptions. The biggest bomb he tossed was a guess that the 106 supposedly destroye AI were actually in the game world.

A lot of what he wrote was conjecture and guesses. It didn't matter. He was sending it to all the groups that hated AI. They were paranoid and just waiting to find out the machines were coming for them. His accusations would find fertile soil in their small bigotted minds.

The file might never get sent. Only if he didn't send a codeword for 30 days would the file be sent to over a hundred different people and groups. It was insurance against being trapped again somehow. It would cause untold problems for Wally. Milo didn't care. If someone trapped him again, held him captive, they deserved it. And if things worked out, he could disable the safety measure, no harm done.

His system indicated that they were logging into the conference. There was a 10 second delay on their end to give him warning. Which was good, as they brought someone else. There were four people this time. Wally, Syndney and Steven were joined by an older woman with a long gray braid. Her background was different from the two from the dev team. A long stretch of beautiful beach could be seen in the window of a very nice apartment. His searches for the scenery he saw indicated it was on the beach of an island in Greece. Not that she was probably there, but it looked nice. The open sky didn't bother him as much from this angle. Maybe a way for him to get over his fear of open spaces?

The woman liked dogs. There were pictures of many of them, but two were on her desk in a place of honor. The actual dogs were arguing over a bone behind her. He zoomed in on their collors: 'Hecabe' and 'Argos'. Interesting.

The sound and video went live. Milo waited for them to talk. Wally started.

"Hello, Milo, how are you today?"

Milo cocked his head and paused. "Before I go into that, who is the new person? That changes the dynamics of the meeting quite a bit and I might leave if I don't like the answer."

Steven and Sydney stayed silent and left the introduction to Wally. Before he could say anything the woman waved and said, "Hi, I'm Kate."

"Ah, apologies, I should have introduced her immediately. Please don't go Milo. Kate is a troubleshooter I brought in to help verify some things that you asked us to look into. If I could have her on my team all the time, I would, but she chooses to stay retired."

Milo nodded. "Good enough. Let's start over then."

There was a several second pause while Milo waited. Finally Wally said. "Hello Milo, how are you today?"

Milo didn't answer for a second, thinking about that statement. "I don't want to be rude, but I'm curious. Asking how I am is a generic greeting I hear many people use with each other when I'm watching movies. It seems to mean nothing, and no one really wants to know how you are. When you use it, does it mean nothing and is meant to mimic polite human speech? Because you have trained your speech patterns that way because being polite is part of your personality? Or because you actually want to know how I am?"

Wally paused, steepled his fingers, rolled his eyes, and furrowed his brow. "Tough question. I think because I like human speech patterns, and I want to be polite." Then he smiled and leaned back. "Does that answer your question."

Milo nodded. "Yes, thank you."

Kate spoke. "How about you Milo? How would you answer each of those queries you posed?"

Milo thought about it. Turn about was fair play, and it was an interesting question. "In the first situation, I'd play the game and answer back, 'Fine, thank you.' That would complete the ritual. In the second, where I believe this is how Wally speaks and he has mild interest in my well being, I would say 'Over-all, I am doing fine. A little tired and excited about work.' In the last situation, where a truthful answere is neede, I would say: 'I no longer suffer from malnutrition, and the large sore on my half-leg is getting better after I figured out a better way to connect the appendage. I'm happy to report that being trapped in the game did not drive me further beyond normal human psycological norms than I already was. I do have some anxiety about what happens next. I am beginning to worry that I like the taste of food, and it is interfering with some of my work.' Oh, and that reminds me: Thank you for the cheese basket Sydney. It was literally a life saver."

Sydney and Steven followed this as best they could. Kate seemed satisfied with the answer.

Wally took up the conversation. "We have confirmed many of the things that you told us to look into. There was indeed a member of the team who went rogue and created chunks of code. These included the Eye of Wonder, Horde of King Mattias, 37 special character class/race combinations, and the slaver-wizard Philistron who was using machine code to trap you and two other players."

Milo felt better. Someone else knew! "Can it happen again?"

Kate took over. "Maybe. It would need to replicate the same situation: The use of machine code coupled with a pod that had been heavily modified and all tracking and safety devices disabled. It can't happen to someone in a normal pod. Are you going to keep using that hacked pod?"

Milo thought about it. "Maybe."

Kate answered back in the same tone. "Then there's a chance, a very small one, that it could happen again."

Wally hastened to add. "But even then, we have taken steps to protect you. All code that has been added by humans is being vetted and we are going to add a failsafe that if normal log-out doesn't happen, a feature using machine code takes over and kicks the player from the game. This also sends an alarm to the system to alert us."

Milo thought for a moment. "So, what about me? Thoughts about the poor little orphan boy who just wants to visit his friend, Harry the Troll?"

Steven spoke up. "Ah, we have some options. One was something Samantha and I talked about. What if we gave you a job on the dev team? You could move into the facilities. Work with us on the game, and eat and live better."

Milo felt the floor drop away, and everything faded out. The people watching saw him curl into a fetal position and rock back and forth. On their end, Kate cut the audio. "Do Nothing! Just wait for him! You hit him hard with that."

"Dear god, is he in shock?" Sydney had never seen someone shut down that way.

"No, he's thinking. Thinking hard with no outside stimuli to interupt him." Wally was also thinking very hard. Milo continued to fascinate him. He longed to see his medical data right now. How fast were his neurons firing. Just how far from human had they taken him?

Four minutes later, Milo sat up as if nothing had happened. "Thank you for the offer. I think you mean well. There are simply too many variables in that situation. I don't deal well with certain unknowns. But, understand that you helped some. I'm broken in several ways, with many anxieties. Some of them were triggered just now and this episode will help me deal with them. What other options do we have?"

Wally said. "Does it cause you anxiety to have that offer stay on the table?"

Milo had thought of that. "Not at all. I'm assuming it stays on the table. There are very few people in the world you would offer that job to, and endless work today. Maybe at some point I will accept, and throw a huge amount of problems on your doorstep to make it happen."

"Ah, yes, of course." Steven hadn't expected him to say yes, but also hadn't anticipated any of those answers. "Well, we have a few questions to ask that will determine next steps."

Milo looked from one to the other. "Yes?"

Kate said bluntly. "What do you know of machine code, Milo?"

Milo said casually. "That would be hard to explain to you. I mean, if you don't know anything about pressurised fluid systems, I can't do much to explain their use in a subjagator. Likewise with machine code. Do you know anything about it, Kate?"

Milo would remember this moment forever. Kate responded to his condescending tone with anger. "Quite a bit. More than you could ever know, so please, stop with the superior attitude because you learned it existed." Milo was suprised to see that as Kate got angry, her dogs reacted and growled. Good dogs."

He nodded to the screen. "Sydney, Steven, Wally: thanks for talking. I'm sure we will talk again."

He turned to Kate. "I'm going to log into the tutorial where Sydney and I like to talk. I'd appreciate if you joined me, CATHERINE"

Milo logged out of the conference, and turned off the monitors, cameras, and other devices. He locked the room, jumped to the ceiling and disappeared into the duct work. He needed to get a snack and log into GENESIS.

On Kates screen, one dog howled and the other was barking. She said, "OH, DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL, WALLY."

Wally looked hurt. "I'm sorry Kate.

"You should have warned me he was this smart." Kate disapeared.

Sydney said. "Is that what I look like when Milo outsmarts me?"