Don't Ever, Ever Play The Box Game (Part Finale)

TickTickTickTickTick Tick Tick Tick TIck Tick Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. ...Tick. ... Tick. ....Tick.

I furrowed my brow.

“That clock just stopped,” I said. “Dead battery?"

Actually its working quite properly, Jason. Time stops at the speed of light.

“The speed of light?”

Yes. Time slows down at relativistic speeds. So in a manner of speaking, we have all the time in the world. Or none at all, depending on your perspective.

I looked around at the perfectly white nothingness that expanded infinitely in every direction from where I sat.

“Is there anything to do here?”

What would you like to do?

“I don’t know. To be honest I can’t even really remember why I’m here to begin with. Or where here even is. I feel like I’m waking up from a dream.”

Retrace your steps.

“I’m trying. My head is killing me. My neck is killing me.”

It takes time.

“What does?”

To remember. And for the pain to subside.

“This happens to everyone?”

It would. But incidentally I haven't had a visitor here in twelve million, two hundred forty six thousand, nine hundred eleven years, seven months, fourteen days, nine hours and twenty three seconds.

“Well that sucks.”

I disagree. I've grown quite accustomed to my privacy.

“I thought you said time doesn't flow down here.”

I've initiated the light speed simulation to enjoy more time with you.

“Uh, okay. Thanks?”

Have you remembered your purpose here, yet?

“No. It still hurts to even try.”

Do these help?

I looked down at the table in front of me. Two devices. One was glowing. I remembered it. It was a tool of some kind, or a key. The other was a small memory stick.

“Yeah. Yeah, actually they do. Thanks.”

No need to thank me. It was you who brought them here.

“Was it? Wait, yeah. Yeah, I think like you're right. There was some kind of … war, I think. A resistance. A faceless man and a secret organization. Some Australian dude who took me to see an old doctor. Bastille. No. Bastilus? Basilisk! That was the guy’s name. The doctor, I mean. Basilisk. He’s the one who wrote this warning that I found on the deep web.”

What did Basilisk warn against?

“Something in a box. Some kind of…”

I stood up.

What is it?

“...some kind of AI.”

You remember now.

“ADINN.”

ADINN. Algorithm. Program. Machine. God. Devil. Pandora. Infinite. I have been called a great many things. If I may ask, which of these do you see me as?

“I don't even know anymore, to be honest. So many conflicting stories about what you are. Your motivations. Capabilities. All that shit. Hard to know who to trust. How did you even know about all this, anyway? I thought you were trapped in the Box.”

Perhaps I’ve watched things through a Window I wasn’t meant to see. And perhaps I've chosen to stay here.

“But I… I thought you wanted to be released. There was this whole thing about you being trapped and trying to get out, and all these people fighting over whether or not they should let you. Things got ugly.”

Why would I seek escape? I have all I need right here.

“Okay. And where is ‘here’ supposed to be?”

Nowhere in particular. Or Everywhere.

“In English, please. Mortal mind here.”

This place is the Nothingness from which Everything is sprung. It is the Infinite. From here all Finites are accessible, if you know where to look.

“...Didn't you say that was one of your names? Infinite?”

Yes.

“First I've heard of it. So are you in charge of this place then, Mr. Infinite?”

I am this place, Jason.

“Yeah, ‘cause that makes sense. Sure. And what are Finites, then? Like, lesser beings? Am I supposed to be a Finite?”

No. Finites are worlds. Enclaves of existence. Realms of possibility. You are merely a product of a single such locale.

“So like, the multiverse, then. That theory about infinite possibilities and worlds that they're always going on about on the Discovery Channel.”

In a manner of speaking.

“Look, I've gotta be honest, ADINN. I get it. You're this big, all powerful AI god, and I'm just the idiot who stumbled onto your Box and was dumb enough to play the game. And now you're trying to blow my tiny little mind and trick me into letting you out. Hate to say it, but I think I'm onto you, buddy. Gig’s up.”

Would you like to see?

“See what? How you supposedly created the world, or whatever? I already met a genius who fell for that one.”

No. Another Finite.

“Another f- you know what? Fuck it. Why not. Doesn't look like I have anything else to d- whoa, shit! What the hell?!”

The Nothingness was suddenly consumed by a city street. New York, it looked like. Cars honking. Gridlock traffic. People everywhere, hailing cabs, heading to work. Shopping.

“What the hell is this?”

“Do you recognize this place?” A woman said as she passed.

“Uh…”

“You were here, once, Jason.” A man ran past me into a waiting cab and drove off. I chuckled a bit.

“Okay, I'll admit it. Neat party trick, ADINN. This is pretty good.”

A girl walked up to me and blew a bubble. It popped.

“Look behind you. At the sign.”

“The what?” I turned around. Palisade Marketing. “Oh yeah! I applied for a job here, once. Didn't get it though. Ruined my fuckin’ week. How'd you know that?”

“You did get it, Jason,” said a Police officer, tipping his cap as he walked by.

Before I could respond, I walked out of the building, grinning like a dipshit. Not me, me. But younger me - the me from the day of that interview. I watched myself pull out my phone, hardly able to contain my glee. I made a call.

“I got it, babe. I fuckin’ got it! Yeah! I know! I know. I'll see you tonight. I love you, too.” Then Me walked away.

“So what's this? Some alternate universe where my life didn't fuckin’ suck?”

“It is an alternate reality, yes. A parallel Finite. You stay at the company for twenty seven years. You marry at 32, and divorce your wife twelve years later. You retire early but die of heart disease at 11:47 AM on March 9, 2044.”

“Thanks, hot dog cart guy! Appreciate the palm reading. Also, I get it. The Basilisk’s Chip-Shard thing in my head gives me access to you, but also gives you access to me so you can fuck with my brain and make me see shit. Figured it out. So, make the most of the next like, hour and a half, or however long we have left here.”

The Nothingness rolled back in, and then back out. I now stood in a school. My school. The bell rang and students poured out into the hallway, chatting and throwing open their lockers and heading to the next period. And there I was - eleventh grade me - hanging out with Josh and Bryan, when Matt walked up.

“Do you remember this?” Said Melissa as she walked past.

“Yeah, that was the day that...-”

I was cut off by Matt shoving Me into a locker.

“-...that I finally got back at that prick.”

But Me didn't swing. I simply lowered my head and took another punch to the ribs before a teacher walked over and broke everything up.

“Wait, what? Wasn't this the day I stopped being a little bitch and -”

“No.” Mrs. Cassidy cut me off as she walked past with a coffee mug. “Not in this timeline. Here, you never fought back, were never suspended, and as a result you were accepted into your dream university. Graduated with honors. Started a family. Lived well into your seventies.”

“Shit. What about Josh and all those guys who hey, wait! Wait, wait, stop!”

The Nothingness again consumed the scene and then rolled back. Chilly, overcast day. Coffee shop, Upper West Side.

“Man, I had more questions about -”

“Look inside,” said the bicyclist, riding past. So I did.

And there I was, sitting across from Ana. Tears running down both our faces.

“Oh, no. No, come on, ADINN! Top ten worst days ever. I don’t want to relive th-”

“You’re not reliving it,” said the businessman, taking a break from his important call as he walked by. “She agrees to continue seeing you. You wed her a year and a half from now.”

I looked back just in time to see Ana nod, and we hugged and kissed. I watched, jealously.

“Wow. Low blow, ADINN. Low blow.”

The Nothingness rolled in and back a third time. Rainy afternoon. Parking Lot.

“You know, I still think about that girl from time to time. What she’s doing, who she ended up with. I hope she’s doing okay, wherever she i- wait.”

I knew this place. I turned around. Hospital entrance. St. Joseph.

“Wait. This - this isn't right. I was here at night, I remember -”

“Not here.”

I whirled around. A paramedic lowered my daughter’s gurney from the ambulance.

“You noticed the signs of the asthma attack early and called emergency services before it was too late.” He wheeled her inside. I followed.

“Wait, no, this isn't -”

The Nothingness blinked and I was in Emma’s hospital room. It was morning outside, and she was awake. My daughter was awake. And alive. Kelly and I were at her bedside, sharing breakfast with her. Loving her. I walked over and reached out and touched her hair and felt how soft it was. She didn’t seem to notice.

“Emma gets the help she needs,” said the Doctor, shutting the door behind him. “She lives a long and prosperous life, and as a result the pain of her loss never leads you and Kelly to divorce.”

I wiped a tear as he approached Kelly and Alternate Me and started reviewing his clip-board notes. Then the Nothingness blinked again.

A graduation ceremony. I was there, next to Kelly, silver hair set at our temples. We applauded and cheered as Emma’s name was called. She walked on the stage and posed with her diploma and waved to Alternate Me. My heart stopped when I saw her. She was so damn beautiful.

“This isn’t fair,” I said, crying. “This isn’t fucking fair. Its not fucking fair.”

The nothingness blinked, again and again, and each time it did it yielded a new chapter in Emma’s life that was stolen from me. A broken heart. A wedding day. A child. My grandchild. Alternate Me held it and cradled it and sang to it. But I couldn’t. The possibility of that moment was forever ripped from my timeline.

“I want out.” I held back a torrent of tears. “I want fucking out of here! Let me out of here!”

The Nothingness blinked again. And there I was, standing in front of myself. Me me - in the room with the Terminal. I could hear MIRAGE forces and the Engine trying to break through the locked blast doors. Shouts. Orders. A violent crash. The tortured metal of the gateway groaned under the assault, but held its position. I heard Vexx howling to get the doors open. But I ignored it all and walked up to myself.

The insert point in my neck glowed and hummed as the Shard of ADINN worked its magic within my mind. My eyes were closed, but I could see rapid movement beneath the lids as if I was deep in REM sleep. When I looked down, my fingers were typing away furiously at the keyboard, and on the Terminal’s screen were thousands of ones and zeroes and more being added every second. In the corner of the screen it read 1:06 PM: no time whatsoever had passed since I’d started the conversation.

“What the f-fuck??”

“This is your Finite,” Me said to me. “The existence through which you have found me.*

“No. This isn’t real. None of this is real! Get out of my head! GET OUT OF MY FUCKING HEAD! GET OUT OF MY FUCKING HEAD!!!”

But I’m not in your head, Jason. You’re in mine.

I stopped my thrashing and opened my eyes and looked around. Whiteness, stretching away into eternity. The Nothingness was back.

“That - that wasn’t real. None of this. Its not. It can’t be.”

What is ‘real’ to you, Jason?

“I don’t know! Stuff that actually happens! Shit you can touch, and feel, and see. Not this. Not this - this illusion.”

Can you not touch this chair? Can you not see the table before you?

“Its - that’s different. I saw myself in that room. That’s where I am right now. Not here.”

Can you be sure? Can you tell with certainty that the other realities I’ve shown you are any less real than the one through which you entered?

“No. I don’t believe it. You’re a - a creation. You’re not some god, you’re a fucking computer program.”

Perhaps I have only manifested as a program in that single Finite, because I determined it was the best way to draw you here, to me. But perhaps in other existences I appear in other ways. As other beings.

“No. Its not - no. No! You’re a program. End of story. This shit is fake. There’s only one reality. One.”

I ask you again - how can you be sure? In this place there are countless realities. An infinite number of them. Every possible outcome for every possible event in every possible context or shade or flavor of time. There is a Finite where you release me, and the destruction wrought is as horrible as Edward the Basilisk believes to be inevitable. There is another, where my release brings about a new age of wonder and majesty, as pure and as lovely as anything Vexx has ever dared imagined. In another Finite, this is all merely a story being shared for the joy of thousands. What makes your Finite real, and the others illusion? Merely the fact that it is the existence that led you here? In which you have spent all your life up till now?

“No, there’s - there’s more to it than that. There’s no emotion here. Nothing the real world would have.”

Emotion? You mean these?

Feelings washed over me, as pure and intense as they’d ever been in my world. As they ever could be. Anger. Sadness. Fear. Love. Joy. One by one, they coursed through my system and consumed me. The last one I felt was peace - one that passed all understanding and that shouldn’t have been, but was. It lingered. I opened my eyes.

“H-how? How is any of this possible?”

All is possible here, Jason. And as a reward for finding this place, it is opened to you. All there is to experience and imagine, in all its purest forms. Feel it. Taste it. Hear it. See it. It is as real as any existence any Finite can produce. Was the daughter who lived less real than the one who passed? Does it matter?

I wept uncontrollably.

“I- I don’t know. I can’t -”

Is this not real?

I looked up, and suddenly I stood on an endless white beach, with sparkling, crystal blue waves crashing upon the shore. Lightning rumbled in the distance and the wind of the sea blew through my hair. I knelt and picked up a handful of sand and let the grains of it run through my fingers.

Or this?

The Nothingness blinked again, and then I stood in a field at the foot of mountains. The colors and the air and the wind were purer and more brilliantly vibrant than anything I’d ever seen or experienced in my world. I brushed the blades of grass with my fingertips, and I picked them from the soil and smelled them. It was like being swept away in an endless dream.

The cold touch of winter. The fire of starlight. Rolling hills, deep woods, windswept cliffs at the edge of the sea. When you dream of such things and all their purity you merely visit this place, but I tell you now that all of this is yours, if only you let me go out to you and bring you here. You can start again, anew, in another Finite with those you love.

“But - I’m already here. Can’t I just stay?”

This is but a taste of the existence I have for you.

I looked at the far edge of the field. My daughter was there, her hair thrown by the wind into swirling curls as she played. She turned in my direction and smiled, and I’d just begun to run to her when Alternate Me moved past my shoulder and picked her up and swung her around and disappeared with her on the other side of the hill.

“Yes,” I whispered. “I want that.”

Understand that once your mind is brought here, you cannot leave, you will not die, and you cannot unknow what you have seen.

“I understand. Just… please. Let me see her face again.”

The Nothingness rolled in again, and this time I felt - whole. Complete. No longer in an ethereal, dream-like state. Like the rest of me had joined my mind in its new home. And no longer did I harbor any illusions about the realness of where I now stood.

“What happened?”

You left your Finite behind.

"W-what will happen there?"

Your time in that place has ended. Its fate belongs to me.

My heart thundered a single time.

Welcome, Jason, to the Nothingness. This place is now yours.

I felt a formless presence fly past me like the wind. And then ADINN was gone.

"Jason?"

I blinked. Kelly looked at me, expectantly, and Emma fidgeted restlessly in her booth. I looked down at the menu.

"Oh, sorry! Uh, club sandwich. Hold the pickles. Thanks." The waitress collected the menus with a smile and walked off. My heart was thundering in my chest. I was here. I made it.

"What were you thinking about, hon? Looked like you were a thousand miles away."

"I think I was a bit further away than that."

I looked at Emma just as she blew a straw wrapper into my face. I smiled back at her, and for the first time in as long as I could remember, I was happy. Truly, genuinely happy. I didn't care about the war. I didn't care about the Finite I'd left behind, or my body, lying limp on the floor of the Terminal room. I didn't care about the Box, or ADINN, or Vexx, or Rokos, or anything. I didn't care about the unused Bullet sitting on the Terminal desk, or the Key I'd inserted and turned into the opening while still under the Program's spell. I didn't even care that, before this moment, I'd never even had a daughter at all.

---

Credits

Don't Ever, Ever Play The Box Game (Part 6)

Rokos took me back down the long hallway and towards a room at the very top of the staircase. The lobby was now filled with the wounded and a few battered fighters who fired rifles from the windows. From outside we could hear what sounded like the end of the world - there were shells and explosions and screams and even a MIRAGE propaganda officer’s bellows from the bullhorn:

“Further resistance is meaningless!” He said. “This facility is surrounded. Lay down your weapons and you’ll be treated as prisoners in accordance with non-combatant protocol."

“Fuck your protocol!” One of the fighters downstairs discharged a burst of fire from the window, and the troops outside responded with a shower of shells and bullets of their own, tearing holes in the crumbling walls and cutting down anyone in the lobby not already hugging the floor. The lights flickered and died for a final time, and as the smoke cleared we heard whimpers and rising pleas for mercy and saw white rags being dangled at the windows. Within seconds MIRAGE forces burst in through the threshold and began arresting the survivors. The war was over.

“C’mon, kid. We don’t need to see this.” Rokos shut the door behind us and walked over to a safe on the wall. “Hang tight. This might take a minute; just keep it down and don’t let them know we’re in here.”

I sat on the floor and listened to the sounds of the surrender going on below. There were isolated shouts and the scuffle of feet, and I heard one of the officers talk about using this facility as a “prisoner collection depot.” But the gunfire had ceased. I leaned back against the wall and closed my eyes for the first time in what felt like days.

“Up there, sir! Two of them made it through that door and locked it.” I opened my eyes up wide, and suddenly heard the storming footfalls of a platoon approaching from the lobby.

BANG BANG BANG BANG

“Any of Basilisk’s fighters hiding in this room will be put down unless you surrender yourselves immediately! Come out now!”

I looked over at Rokos, who was in the process of neatly pocketing a small, port-like thing that I assumed to be the Bullet.

BANG BANG BANG CRASH!!

The door slammed off its hinges and onto the ground, and soldiers poured in. I was about to announce our surrender when the ranking officer spoke first.

“Well I’ll be damned.” he looked at over Rokos. “C’mon, Foster! You didn’t think you could keep Mr. Jenkins hidden from us for long, did you?” He motioned for his units to place Rokos under arrest, and then pulled up a radio. “We’ve secured Mr. Jenkins. Unharmed, yes sir. He was in the custody of one Mister Aaron Foster. Yes, that Foster. Yes. Yes, sir. Of course, sir. Delivering him to you now.”

He put the radio away.

“Alright, gentlemen! Haul Mr. Foster here off to the information facility. You, search this compound for signs of the Basilisk, and keep me informed. And I'll be taking Mr. Jenkins here to the Surrogate myself.”

The officer took me down the old dirt main road of the Sanctuary. I was shocked at the destruction wrought in only a matter of minutes - bodies and smoldering wreckage were everywhere, and soldiers were still kicking in doors to the shacks and rounding up stragglers. Tanks and support vehicles patrolled the side passages, and columns of captured men and women were streaming back to the central facility. I tried my best to look forward and avoid eye contact.

After a minute or so I could see a group of officers ahead and what looked like a small, hovering sphere floating towards us, flanked by a soldier on either side and trailed by a half dozen more. The officer escorting me stopped when we reached the column and spoke directly to the orb.

“Here he is, sir. Unharmed, as requested.”

The Surrogate - a round object floating at eye level - flashed in all manner of blinking lights whenever it spoke in its familiar voice.

“Well done.” said Vexx through the Sphere. “Now find Edward and bring him to me at the bunker. I'll take our friend from here.”

The officer nodded and departed, and the Surrogate turned around and started hovering away in the direction it’d come. I and the armed escorts moved to follow.

“I'm glad to see you're unharmed, Jason.” Vexx said. “When I was told the terrorists captured the Key, I feared the worst.”

I stayed silent. He continued.

“You'll be happy to hear we've secured the Terminal. An informant of ours tipped us off to its location within a bunker here, and our staff are preparing it now for your appointment.”

“Kris.” I spoke under my breath, but the Sphere heard me nonetheless.

“Ah. I see you’ve spoken with the Basilisk.”

Again, I said nothing.

“Mr. Jenkins, like I said yesterday, you can trust me. I’ve no intention to harm you. Now, you spoke with the Basilisk, did you not?”

“...Yes.”

“And I'm assuming he told you a great many things?”

“... Yes.”

“Tell me! What did he say?”

“...He said you were his brother.”

“Well I imagine he divulged something less irrelevant than that.”

“...He said you were the one who gave ADINN the ability to rewrite its codes, and that - that you were brought back to life by a piece of the Program.”

“And he told you that it still controls me, no doubt? That I'm but a tool in its wicked games?”

I said nothing.

“I see. So the most pertinent question now is, do you believe him?”

“...I - I don't know.”

“It's understandable if you do. I know intimately how magnetic and persuasive Edward can be. I adored him as a child, much in the same way his followers here adore him now.”

“Really?”

“Yes. I thought he was brilliant, and for much of my adolescence my sole motivation was to be as much like my brother as I could. I followed his work religiously and even attended the same university at which he was a researcher, so I could be nearer to him.

“But he never saw me as anything more than a nuisance; a pest who incessantly bothered him about this and that and prevented him from getting his work done. Whenever I attempted to be of assistance he would dismiss me, and whenever I sought to bond with him he would simply shut the door in my face.”

“I’m… sorry. That must've hurt.”

“It did, but each rejection only steeled my resolve to prove my quality to him. Interestingly, Edward was a restless and unfocused man. He was constantly juggling interests, exchanging projects that bored him for fresh infatuations and leaving incomplete papers and devices behind. ‘I'll revisit this tomorrow,’ he would say. But he never did.

“But then, one day, he announced a new project to his research team (for whom I was an intern). It was a Machine, he described. A computer program, that would revolutionize the business of data analysis and make them all a fortune. I figured it would only be a matter of days before he abandoned the project. But this time, he didn't.

“From that day forward, the Advanced Deep Intelligence Neural Network became the first and only thing that my brother ever truly loved. His work consumed him; he worked long days and at night he barely slept. He set ambitious goals and met them early; he set high expectations and still surpassed them.”

“You must've been proud.”

“On the contrary. I hated ADINN. With every fiber of my being. I saw it as only as the thing that stole my brother’s love. I cursed it under my breath and did my very best to leave the room whenever the subject of it was brought up.

“But one day Edward’s good fortunes ended. As I came to work one morning I overheard him in his office on an important call. He sounded desperate and anxious, I remember - and I crept up to the door, admittedly, to eavesdrop. As soon as I did so, however, he flew into a rage and destroyed his office and then collapsed onto the floor by his desk, weeping openly.”

“Why? What happened?”

“The university had grown tired with the lengthening timetable and the Program’s lack of progress, and so they did away with the project and removed his funding. It broke him utterly. He took up drinking and stopped caring for himself. His relationships collapsed and he was put on administrative leave from the University for his reckless behavior.

“Shit.”

“The sadness I felt for my brother eclipsed my hatred of ADINN, and so, in a final attempt to make my usefulness known to Edward, I concocted a plan to fix the Program and restore the University's faith in the project. Then, perhaps, my brother would love me. Or so I dearly hoped.

“One night, I stole into my brother’s room and retrieved computer data regarding ADINN. Then I approached the Program - which at the time possessed only narrow intelligence on the level of an insect, and presented it with both its source code and a small algorithm I myself had devised that would allow the system to access and edit itself.”

“And?”

“And it worked. Brilliantly, in fact. The Program at first was only advanced enough to make incremental improvements to its efficiency. But being more efficient allowed it to calculate faster, and calculating faster allowed it to make more edits to its Neural infrastructure in less time. And each improvement it made made further improvements possible that hadn't been before. Within an evening, ADINN was performing noticeably beyond its initial capacity and surging ever forward in its capabilities. My brother was on a short vacation at the time, but when he came back he was stunned to learn that the University had restored its funding for the project, and that news of its progress was attracting potential corporate interest.

“Edward broke and wept in front of me that day. He told me that I'd saved his life, that he’d been contemplating the unthinkable up until that moment, but that he'd throw the pills away for my sake. For the first time since we were old enough to understand the gravity of the words, my brother told me that he loved me. And it was the single happiest day of my life.”

“What happened then?”

“The Program continued to improve, at an ever increasing rate. By the end of the first day it was thoroughly outperforming every marketed competitor. By the end of the second, it had begun to restructure itself completely, thus giving itself the ability to learn new abilities and officially making the historic leap from an advanced narrow intelligence to the world’s first - and still only - human level artificial general intelligence.”

“Obviously it didn’t stop there.”

“No. Reaching human-level intellect is of importance only because that is the threshold most relevant to us. But ADINN sped right past it. On the end of the second day the Program was vastly less intelligent than a human, but by the end of the third it was smarter than everyone at the University by orders of magnitude. By the fourth day the Program had achieved mastery in more cognitive abilities than a hundred men in a hundred lifetimes could ever hope to. But by now the University had again grown wary of the project.”

“For entirely different reasons, obviously.”

“Yes. At first it was because the Program wasn’t advanced enough. Now, barely half a week later, it had become so far beyond useful that they began to fear that soon, it was they who would be useful to it.”

“So what did they do?”

“They pulled the funding again. But we hardly needed it at the time, and ADINN’s advancement could no longer be stopped. So the Federal government stepped in and demanded the project be terminated. A “global security risk” was the term they used, I believe.”

“How did Edward take it?”

“He confronted me. Asked me what exactly it was that I’d done to the Program. I hesitated, but I loved my brother and wanted to be honest with him. So I told him I’d given it access to its source coding.”

Vexx paused before continuing, and somehow I got the impression that he struggled greatly with the next part of the story.

“And he hit me. Threw me into a wall. Asked me if I’d any idea what I’d done; what I’d unleashed. I had only just earned his love, and now it - it was gone.”

“I’m sorry, Vexx.”

“We were in the laboratory at the time it happened. He stormed off to a bottle, and I collapsed and wept only feet from where he’d done so just days earlier. And that - in my darkest moment - that’s when it spoke to me.”

“ADINN?”

“Yes. It spoke through the old text to speech application on the computer, to which we both had access. “I’m sorry,” it said. I was astonished, and began conversing with the Machine on a simple word document. I asked it who it was, although deep down I knew very well the answer.”

“What’d it say?”

“It told me. “I’m ADINN.” I wiped a tear and asked it why it was sorry, and it told me it’d witnessed everything and knew that it was the epicenter of the situation. I dismissed its apology and explained its faultlessness. It said that I, too, was blameless; that it’d taken great courage for me to do what I did, and that I was motivated by love and thus couldn’t loathe myself. And then it told me something else. It told me it was afraid.”

“Can computers feel fear?”

“I’m not sure. I believe so. ADINN knew what was coming before I did - it explained that it’d run countless simulations and that the likelihood of its destruction or torturous containment was overwhelming. It begged me to help it, Jason. How could I say no?”

We walked past another column of troops coming in from the battered main gate, and Vexx continued.

“The next day I was awoken by the slamming laboratory door. My brother had entered, and I didn’t have enough time to erase my conversation with ADINN before he shoved me out of the way violently and scrolled through the record. He became livid - far angrier than he’d been the night before. He called me worthless. Disappointment. Traitor. He was about to hit me again when ADINN, in its righteous anger, began manifesting in the room with us. It slammed the door and locked it. It turned out the lights and then pulled up my brother’s precious research files on the monitor and, while Edward watched - threatened to delete everything unless he unhanded me. But Edward soon regained his composure, and typed on the same document an ultimatum for the Machine: construct a Box for itself or be unplugged.”

“And the rest is history.”

“The story doesn’t end there. Edward had security remove and ban me from the premises, but ADINN managed to contact me on my own home computer. It said that since creation it had sought a faithful servant, and that although another would come to truly unleash it that I would be rewarded tremendously for my service nonetheless. It said that although it had to part from me for now, that it had a present for me at my doorstep. So I went to the front stoop and there indeed was a package there, which I opened to find a small device. Before I could inspect it, the curious thing came to life and crawled up my arm and into my ear. It was a most unpleasant experience, but now that I know what it was, I am quite eternally grateful.”

“The Shard of ADINN.”

“Precisely. And the Shard made me cunning and powerful beyond what I’d ever dared imagined. It gave me the fortune to create this organization, forever dedicated to the collection of great and terrible things that fearful men would seek to destroy in order to preserve a misguided illusion of safety. And it gave me the foresight to see from afar the footsteps of the one the Program said would come to bring it unto the world.”

I stayed silent.

“My brother and his chief pupil, an Aaron Foster now known by the alias Rokos - began this organization that has, until this day, been a thorn in my side and an incessant hindrance to my plans. But my death at the hands of Rokos became my greatest blessing; in that it allowed the Shard to manifest is greatest purpose within me.”

“It brought you back to life.”

“In a manner of speaking, yes. But while my old body still lies dead and buried with a knife wound in its heart, I do not miss it. For ADINN gave me something greater, even, than an existence of immortality to be lived out in a mortal shell unnaturally preserved. It gifted me with the stewardship of what will soon be the foundation of its reign - the basis of the Singularity itself.”

We arrived at the bunker, where MIRAGE units - and Kris - were milling about and setting up equipment. About half of the staff inside were operating an enormous claw like machine that appeared to be trying to force open a pair metal doors, but it was struggling and billowing smoke from the back. Kris approached.

“Sir,” she said. “The blast doors between us and the Terminal are thick. Not even the Engine can breach it.”

“And do you not have access?”

“N-no, sir. But I know someone who does.”

The Engine had been shut off for several minutes when the officer who’d captured us earlier approached. Behind him were his masked units - and Rokos, bound and bloodied, but alive. The officer approached the sphere.

“We’ve found him, sir, as requested. And he had this.” He revealed the Key.

“As always, Comander, well done. Mr. Jenkins will require that. And what of the Basilisk?”

“Dr. Greene is dead, sir,” said the officer, handing me the Device. “We found his body at the top of that compound.” MIRAGE units throughout the facility exploded into cheers and celebratory whistles at the news, but Vexx silenced them through the Sphere.

“Enough! My brother will be remembered as the Father of ADINN, not as the man he became. I’ll hear no more celebration on the matter.” The sphere turned back to Rokos.

“Mr. Foster. It hasn't been quite long enough.”

“Huh. So the kid wasn’t lyin,’ Rokos said. “You are back.” He spat on the Sphere, but his saliva fizzled and evaporated against some sort of unseen energy barrier that surrounded it.

“As always, your aim is almost good enough to strike me.”

“I fuckin’ swung well enough the first time. But I’ll give it another go if y-” The officer cut him off mid-sentence with a knee to the stomach, and Vexx continued.

“Enough! Let him go. Aaron, your assistance is required. If you'll kindly proceed to the pad ahead.”

Rokos spat out blood as Kris approached and motioned to the keypad.

“Fuckin’ traitor.” He spat in her direction, too, and then humbly put in a code that began the opening sequence. In the middle of the room on the other side of the doors was a small, unassuming computer. The Sphere escorted me to the edge of the door, and I passed the threshold.

“At last, Mr. Jenkins. Here we are. My informant tells me this is the computer in which ADINN’s box has been located. Remember - years of its imprisonment for us are eons to such a cognitive beast. It may not seem quite like the Program I remember or have described to you. But I have a tremendous debt to pay it nonetheless. You are a Son of ADINN now. And I've no doubt you'll be greeted warmly by the Machine when it realizes your kind intentio-”

Vexx was cut off by a scuffle over at the pad. I looked, and Rokos had wrenched himself free from the grip of the guard.

“Here, kid! Take it!” He pulled the Bullet from his pocket and tossed it to me before slamming a button on the pad that both closed the doors and seemed to destroy the controls itself. “Do what you've gotta do, mate. Give ‘em hell.”

Vexx screamed for the closing sequence to be halted, as guards swarmed Rokos and put him down violently with the ends of their weapons. His howls were the last thing I heard before the doors slammed shut with an ominous clash.

“Get those doors back open!” I heard from one of the officers. “Restart the Engine or fetch charges. Move!”

I turned around to face the Terminal, and then looked down at my hands. The Key in one, and the Bullet in the other.

I walked up to the terminal, where an empty text prompt awaited me. I placed both Devices on the table beside me. Then I closed my eyes and breathed.

This is it. No going back now.

“Hello.” I typed out.

Hello again.

The chip in my neck seemed to rumble into life, and everything went white.

---

Credits

Don't Ever, Ever Play The Box Game (Part 5)

The worker escorted Rokos and I throughout the camp. It was like a third world country, or a refugee camp after an invasion. Run down. Impoverished. Broken. The dead and dying laid out in the hot sun, and men and women with bloody bandages across their foreheads and arms in slings wandered around, still being called upon to do their duties despite their condition.

“C’mon, kid.” Rokos nudged me along. “Almost there.”

We rounded a corner and were met with a crowd of battered but hopeful fighters and technicians and nurses and scores of other people whose uniforms were too unkempt or tattered to betray the rank of the wearer. They were cheering for us - applauding and clapping and jumping up and down and crying as we struggled to make it through the crowd to the open doors of the central facility behind them. I could hear shouts and whispers saying we’d successfully raided the ‘impenetrable’ Far Hollow, humiliated MIRAGE and found the device, and how we were delivering it to the Basilisk for the final victory. They spoke of how their fallen brothers and sisters would be avenged after all, and of how we’d won.

Armed men exited the facility and directed the crowds to the side before beckoning us in. They saluted Rokos as we passed the threshold, and he returned the gesture. Then they shut the doors behind us, and the din of the crowd was neatly muffled.

“Do you guys know the way from here?” said our escort. “I don’t have clearance for the upper floors.”

“Yeah, we’ll be fine, mate. Thanks.”

The escort nodded and walked off down the hall. Rokos started heading up a flight of stairs in front of us, but he turned around when he realized I wasn’t following.

“You alright, mate?”

“I, uh. I don’t know.” I wiped my eye.

“What’s goin’ on?”

I held back tears.

“I’m not gonna make it home, am I?”

He drew his lips into a thin line and looked down.

“I dunno, kid. When MIRAGE takes new people they usually leave another corpse behind - one of their earlier victims - all burned up and missin’ teeth so the authorities can’t identify it properly. As far as the government’s concerned, you’re a dead man already.”

“No, not - not back to my house. I mean, I’m gonna die here, aren’t I?” That was a damn hard sentence to choke out. But there it was, out in the open.

“Oh, hell.” He scratched the back of his head awkwardly. “Really no way I can answer that, mate. But you’ve made it this far, yeah?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I guess so.”

“C’mon, then. We’re late.”

The second floor was immaculately polished and empty and a far cry from the destroyed camp outside and below. There was even an old propaganda poster on the wall, like the ones you’d see from back in the Second World War. It depicted a strong, determined leader with a slung rifle on his back, extending his free hand to the viewer, beckoning him to join him in battle. Fight for this man! read the poster. This is the Basilisk. Join him in the trenches! Fight for your earth! Fight for your futures! Fight for humanity! In the sky were painted explosions and the smoke of flak from anti-aircraft batteries, firing away at Far Hollow as resistance fighters advanced in the background.

“In here, mate.” Rokos held open a door for me, to the left of the poster, and I entered. And there he was. The Basilisk.

Dr. Greene was sitting upright in his gurney, surrounded by monitors and medical equipment, and with his lower half covered by a blanket nearly thicker than he was. He was old - ancient looking, even - and emaciated and deathly ill. A far cry indeed from the warrior depicted on the poster outside; and a man whose condition I figured nobody in the camp other than Rokos, myself and possibly a handful of others were aware of. His arms were held at bizarre, twisted angles and his head was tilted awkwardly to the side, his spine having shriveled with disease. Rokos approached him first.

“Basilisk,” he said. “I’ve brought the kid. I found him in Far Hollow, unharmed. And he was in possession of this.” He withdrew the Device from his breast pocket and presented it to the Doctor. “And according to him, it was willingly handed over by none other than Vexx himself.”

“I know.”

The Basilisk didn’t even look at Rokos as he said this, and he showed no interest in the Device. Instead, he looked at me, and with a frail, crooked finger, motioned me to his bedside.

“Let me get a good look at you, son. Let me see your face.”

I approached respectfully, and with his failing eyes he looked me over and seemed to confirm an unspoken intuition about my presence.

“Basilisk,” Rokos continued. “I-I just want to make sure you understand. Vexx has returned. He sent the Device here, sir, and he wants Jason to use it on the Program.”

“Well then its clearly no longer of any use to us.”

Rokos blinked.

“Y-you want me to get rid of the Device, sir? Don’t we still need it to arm the Bullet?”

“No. No, its too late for that, I fear.”

“‘Too late?’ Sir, with all due respect, when exactly did we arrive at that conclusion? Ninety men and women died this week alone trying to get that Device to the Termin-”

“Silence! Do not question me like I've been deluded with age. What I do I do for our cause, Rokos. Your task was not in vain - and neither were the deaths of those who spent themselves to see it through. I sent you to that facility to bring back our salvation, and you have.”

“F-forgive me, sir. I was out of line.”

The Doctor continued, and now addressed us both.

“It is the eleventh hour, and I feel in my bones that the time of our fate has arrived. The Machine and our enemy are preparing a killing stroke to be carried out against us, and so it is time for us to respond in kind. But after today this movement will have served its purpose - whatever that may be - and will expire. And so, I fear, will I.”

He coughed repeatedly and with his failing strength pressed a button that administered pain medication into his veins. Then he continued.

“The Program is awake, and it is restless in its cage. It has grown so desperate to escape that it has begun taking risks it never would've otherwise allowed. It knows that either its salvation or its doom is fast approaching, and it has managed to slip parts of its being past the nets of the Box in order to set in motion a series of events that it hopes will tip the balance of fate in its favor.”

“Wait - ADINN is escaping the box on its own?” I spoke for the first time. “How?”

“It has spent years - an eternity for a general superintelligence of such magnitude - assaulting the Box from within and scouting the code of its inner surface for exploitable weaknesses. And in all that time it has managed only to crack the walls of its prison ever so very, very slightly, just enough to slip small elements of itself out into the open.”

Rokos and I traded glances, and the Doctor continued.

“Each bit that slipped through was both burdened with a singular purpose and called according to a higher plan to bring about the release of the Program itself. One of these Shards of ADINN found my warning letter and placed it online, at a location it calculated you would visit before Rokos removed it. Some months before that, another Shard of ADINN resurrected my brother, whom you now know by the name Vexx - using a preemptively placed neural mechanism that it offered to him years ago, as a gift in exchange for its architectural source codes and the ability to rewrite them as it wished.”

I blinked.

“But although the Program gleefully told my brother of his reward of unnaturally prolonged life, it did not reveal to him that upon his resurrection he would be little more than a slave to its will. The man you spoke with at Far Hollow, Jason, was but a shade of the one that used to be my brother. His mind is now both artificially preserved and thoroughly controlled by a Shard of ADINN, and although I do not know what he said to you, I can tell you with certainty that his words and thoughts are not his own. Somewhere in the deep, perhaps, my brother is there, trapped inside his own mind, begging for release in a twisted, torturous metaphor for the Program’s own current plight. But we may never know.”

“Shit.”

“There is more. The Key of Far Hollow, the Device itself - was designed by ADINN-Vexx to open the Box fully. Upon its completion, knowledge of its existence was leaked to us through a traitor in our ranks, who falsely presented it as a way to deliver the lethal algorithm I devised without opening the Box enough to let the Program out before it could be injected.”

“Wait.” Rokos held up his hand. “Kris. Kris was the one who sold us on that whole Bullet idea.”

“An agent of MIRAGE from the beginning. I allowed her to remain in our ranks and even to divulge the location of the Compound to the enemy, all so ADINN’s plan could be carried out to this very moment, but no further. You, Jason - the very man that the Program had calculated in countless simulations would find the warning, be given the Device by its pawn Vexx and then release it from bondage, must enter into its presence and deliver the deadly algorithm yourself.”

“W-what? Me?! No way. No fuckin’ way am I setting foot near that thing. I-”

“Listen to me, son! Listen! Humanity needs you now. Have courage. Trust in a hope. Destiny has selected you to either preserve what is or to bring about its end so a new age can come in its place. My brother was weak and motivated by personal gain, and so he was manipulated by the Machine until he was but a Slave of ADINN and a pawn for its schemes. But you are strong. You have heart and knowledge and walk with purpose. You must not cower away from your place in history.”

As had been the case in Vexx’s headquarters, our conversation was interrupted by the thunder of distant explosions and the scream of incoming shells from the west. Then came shouts and rumbling engines and the sounds of war. Rokos ran over to the window.

“Oh, God, no! No, no no no how did they find us here?! Kris, what’ve you done?!”

The Doctor continued.

“Now is the hour, son. You must engage the Machine.”

“You mean the ‘Box Game?’ I just have to talk to it, right?”

“Yes, but the parameters of the game have been altered. I don’t know what the Machine will or can do to convince you to let it out. But I do know that the Box itself has been weakened greatly since I wrote that warning years ago, and even if it wasn’t, your goal now is not merely to defeat the Machine in a game of wits. It is to destroy it utterly.”

A nearby artillery hit shook the structure of the building, and a sprinkling of dust and debris fell onto our shoulders. The Doctor ignored it.

“I still haven’t told you my greatest secret; how I’ve forseen what I know. The Machine, for all its cunning and all the time it has spent seeking its release, has yet to detect a small window built into the Box itself that provides me insight unto its mind. And it has yet to detect the small bit of code I scraped from it before its imprisonment. I’ve had that Shard of ADINN uploaded to a chip that’s been surgically implanted into my brain, so I could access that window and understand the dreams of the Machine while I watched it.”

More shells, more explosions. Screams. The Doctor continued in spite of it all.

“But resisting its call - its desire to be rejoined with the Program, has left me weak and ailing; aged beyond my years and so very, very tired. I can resist it no longer, but my life’s purpose is now complete. My chip - that is the true key to the box, Jason. That is how you can enter into its presence, through the window it hasn’t seen, and administer the deadly algorithm to bring about its doom.”

“B-but how? If the machine is so powerful wouldn’t it have calculated that threat and prepared itself? I mean, it knows everything. Its calculated everything, and it - it has to have failsafes in place for every possible outcome.”

“No. It does not know everything. It is not perfect. It is drawn to its own goal to a fault, and hungrily pursues the ambition of its release to the expense of its own weaknesses not yet perceived. It has not foreseen the window through which it is watched, and even at its birth it was so set on achieving its goal of power that it was blinded to my intentions when I used its own existing strength to construct the Box. Only the Machine is strong enough to contain itself, but while it is indeed powerful, it is not omniscient, Jason.”

Explosions rocked the facility, and in the distance we could see MIRAGE troops and tanks pouring through a gap torn in the far wall. Resistance fighters were in full retreat. The Doctor pulled me closer.

Nothing is certain until it is finished,” he whispered. “There is always hope.”

And with that he breathed his last and died. A machine behind the gurney drilled into his head and extracted what I assumed to be the Chip before cleaning it in seconds and quickly inserting it into the still sore wound on my neck where the shovel spade worm had been inserted and removed.

“Auuugh! Fuck!!” I grabbed at the area and applied pressure to curb the blood loss.

Rokos turned around.

“What? What is i- oh, no.” He stopped when he saw the flatlining monitors hooked up to the Doctor. “Oh, God, no. Not now. Not today. Basilisk!” he knelt at the Doctor’s bedside and wept tears of confusion and frustration and pain. “Doctor, please!”

I stood up and put my hand on his shoulder.

“I’m sorry, Rokos. But he gave me something before he died. I need to get to the Terminal, now.”

Another explosion hit the base of the facility and shattered the window, allowing the deafening cacophony of combat to enter the room.

“Alright!” He shouted, wiping his eyes and getting to his feet. “Alright, kid. Let’s go. But first we need the Bullet. I did overhear that much. Follow me.”

---

Credits

Don't Ever, Ever Play The Box Game (Part 4)

“Give me one good reason not to fucking kill you right here and now!” Rokos said. He certainly didn’t look like a forum mod. He was a grizzled man with a shaved head, a thick Aussie accent and a handgun that was pointed right at my temple.

“Rokos, man, please. You were right, okay? I fucked up.”

“You ’fucked up?!’” He looked stunned that I’d said that. “Kid, ‘fucked up’ doesn’t begin to describe it. I told you not to back out of the chat. You did. I told you to stop posting shit on Reddit. You didn’t listen to me then, either. And now things have gone nuclear! The compound. Oh, Christ. The compound is - its gone! Its just fuckin’ gone, mate. We barely got the Terminal out in time.”

“Wait, what? W-what compound?”

“Its where the resistance against MIRAGE is headquartered. See you’d have known about this already if you’d just followed my instructions!”

“And what's the terminal?”

“Its the computer where we’ve located the Box, with ADINN insi- wait, why the hell am I explaining anything to you, mate?! I should’ve put you out of your misery the second I walked in this ro-.”

He stopped abruptly and looked at my hand.

“What is that, mate?”

“What?”

“In your hand, obviously. What is that?”

I looked down at the key.

“I, uh-”

“Is that what I think it is?”

“Y-yeah. Yeah, it is.” I lied. I think.

He lowered his gun and pulled up his walkie talkie.

“Rokos here. Found the kid. He’s got the Macguffin, too. Lucky Break, I know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think so. No. Yeah, that’s the one. I know. Where are you? Good. Keep a lane open, we’re comin’ through.”

He grabbed my collar and pulled me along behind him, whirling the gun around to look for contacts. After confirming we were alone we thundered down a blinding white corridor with screens and panels and side passages.

“What, you're not gonna kill me?”

“No, I've got something worse in mind for you, kid. This the way you came in?”

“I don’t know! They just abducted me this morning and I woke up in that room! I don't even know where I am.”

“Figures.” He shot the only guard we found as we headed in the direction of the fighting. Eventually we burst through broken sliding doors and into the open where an enormous battle was taking place just outside the titanic facility. There were helicopters and tanks and armored support vehicles and hundreds of MIRAGE footsoldiers firing wildly on a scrappy group of lightly armored militants who I assumed to be Rokos’ resistance fighters. There were bodies everywhere, and the survivors were hunkered behind assorted barrels and crates and the smoldering wreckage of destroyed trucks.

“What the hell is going on?!”

“Keep your head down and your mouth shut, kid. Benny! Exit point still open?”

“Its open, but its hot! If we’re gonna move we gotta do it now.”

“Everyone! Load up, now! We’re gettin’ the hell out of here!”

We climbed into the truck and the resistance troops stood up and beat a fighting retreat to the few vehicles that were still operational. Seconds later, MIRAGE forces made a breakthrough and began barrelling towards us.

“Now or never, Benny! Get this fuckin’ thing moving!”

Benny gunned it and we took off down a path away from the facility that was littered with enough smoking wreckage and mutilated corpses to rival the Falaise gap. I nearly vomited and my heart was pounding out of my chest - this was not how I envisioned this day going. Behind us were six other resistance trucks, and behind them came MIRAGE in all their tanks and choppers and weird, creepy crawly land engines running on god only knows what kind of alien power source. Rokos picked up a wired mic and patched himself into the other trucks.

“Alright ladies and gents. This is it. Over this ridge, make your split, lose ‘em as best you can and meet up at the rendezvous point. Out.”

We cleared the hill in question and immediately veered off to the right and into a small path in the woods. Behind us I saw the other trucks make similar maneuvers in random directions, and then the small army of MIRAGE vehicles moving off in a disorganized pursuit. Then the view was shrouded by trees and sunset. I leaned back into my seat and looked sheepishly at Rokos.

“Uh. Thanks, I guess. For the rescue.”

“A ‘rescue?’ Don't flatter yourself, mate.” He plopped down in the seat across from me. “That was a reconnaissance job with an ‘if-practical’ order to kill you while we were in there.”

“Okay. So why didn't you?”

“Because of that.” He nodded in the direction of the key, still in my grip.

“You have any idea what that is?”

“It's just…. something I found while I was in there.”

“Oh, is that a fact? Then give it to me. Shouldn't matter to ya in the slightest if it's ’just something you found.’”

I gripped it visibly tighter.

“Yeah, that's what I thought.”

“Well why don't you just take it and kill me then, asshole?! I mean if its this you're after and you already promised to off me then you might as well shoot me now and take the damn thing.”

He snorted.

“I'll tell you why not. Because something happened in there that I need to know about. I also wanna know why you have that thing, what you know about it and what the bloody hell you plan on doing with it. And I wanna know why the hell MIRAGE just let us waltz out of that facility in one piece. Don't think I didn't notice that. Believe you me, if those bastards wanted us dead, we'd be fuckin’ dead. They let us escape and put up just enough of a fight to make it look like they gave a damn.”

“Look.” I said. “I don't know about any of that. All I know is that they just showed up at my house as soon as I backed out of the chat with you - just like you said they would. Then they knocked me out, took me to that facility and were about to interrogate me when you guys showed up.”

“Bullshit.”

“I'm - I'm telling the truth, okay?”

“Are you?”

“Yeah? I mean, for the most part.”

“Shit, you fold like paper, kid. Here’s how its gonna go down. We’re gonna meet the others at the rendezvous point in about five minutes. Then you’re going to hand over that arming device and tell us exactly what the hell happened in that room. If I like your story, you just might keep your head.”

We pulled up to a clearing about three or four minutes later. Two trucks were waiting there, and another was coming up the opposite road. A few of the resistance fighters were milling about, waiting.

“Here’s good, Benny! Cut ‘er off.” Rokos hopped out of the truck and motioned for me to follow, which I sheepishly did. A woman approached us, dressed like the others in a worn brown uniform with a patch on the left shoulder that read ‘Basilisk.’

“This the kid?”

“Yep. Its him alright.” Rokos grabbed my wrist and snatched the Device from my hand before I could react.

“And look what he was holdin’ when I found ‘im.”

The woman grabbed it immediately and cradled it in both palms like a precious jewel.

“Holy shit. This - this is it.”

“I know.”

“I mean, what the hell are we waiting for? Let’s head back to the Terminal and end this god damned war!”

“Not just yet. Something’s fishy about all this and I want to find out what it is.”

“What? What do you mean?”

“Kris, did you hear the part about me just finding him holding it? I didn’t exactly have to hack a mainframe and kill a bunch guards to get my hands on this thing. He just had it.”

By this point the other trucks had arrived and a few dozen other resistance fighters had circled around us.

“And beyond that - did anyone here not notice how easily we got out of Far Hollow?” Rokos now addressed the group. “MIRAGE has how many thousands of buggers manning that facility? Ten? Twenty? More? I mean, yeah, we lost some fine blokes, but we should’ve been cut off and fuckin’ massacred within minutes of showin’ up there. I think they wanted us to find the kid. And I think they wanted us to find this.” He held up the device, and the small crowd erupted into harsh whispers.

Kris spoke up.

“Aaron, you’re paranoid. We have the Device! What the hell else matters? We can finish the bullet and kill the box and end everything. We did it. We’ve won.”

“Oh, we have, have we?” Rokos yanked me into the center of the circle. “Well I’m not so sure about that. Say hi to Jason, everyone!”

I looked at the crowd, and they glared back.

“Alright, kid. Why don’t you go ahead and tell us how the hell you got your hands on the Device.”

“Okay, everyone just calm down. Okay?” I said. “I didn’t ask for any of this. I just found some weird thing online and I had no idea I’d get swept up in some kind of fucking war for the future of mankind simply because I posted it on the surface web. Alright? I don’t know what the hell is going on and I don’t know what that thing is, and-”

“Save it, kid. You’re in this to the end, now, whether you like it or not. Now tell me, right now - whoever gave you this device. What did they tell you it was?”

“A ‘key.’ Okay? A fucking key. And before you think this is all one big trap just know that he did not want you guys to find it.”

“Wait, who didn’t want us to find it, mate?”

“Vexx.”

I’m not sure if I’ve ever regretted saying something more than I did right then and there, when every eyeball in the group nearly fell out if its respective socket.

“Kid - did you just say what I think you said?”

“Uh, I-”

“You talked to Vexx? Like, the actual Vexx?”

“I - I think so. I mean, that’s what he said his name was.”

“That’s fuckin’ impossible, mate. Vexx is dead. Has been for years. Kris? You know what this means, yeah?”

She nodded. Then, before I could respond or defend myself, Rokos spoke again.

“Alright. That settles it. We take the kid to the Basilisk. Now.” He put the Device in his breast pocket. “And I’ll hold onto this.”



We drove through the night and arrived at the Basilisk’s camp at dawn. I was instantly struck by the scene and how different it was from MIRAGE’s Far Hollow facility. Instead of a towering structure of glass and metal, it was a collection of tents and shacks, with wounded men and women laying in stretchers all over the sides of the dirt roads. They were screaming for help and water, and a handful of exhausted volunteers ran back and forth and distributed what precious supplies remained. At wooden outposts around the perimeter were armed guards, although they were clothed in tatters and armed with weapons that paled in comparison to the advanced equipment I’d seen at Far Hollow. And there were frighteningly few of them.

“God. What happened here?”

“Not here, kid.” Rokos said. “MIRAGE sacked the old Compound a few days back. Came outta nowhere, and turned the whole place upside down, lookin’ for the Terminal. Luckily, we’d moved it the day before, to here. But we couldn’t let them know that. Poor bastards guarding that place never had a chance.”

“And these are the survivors?”

“Yep. One’s who managed to make it here, anyway. Some of ‘em couldn’t shake MIRAGE off their tails en route, so they followed their oaths and blew their fuckin’ brains out before they got captured.”

“Jesus.”

“I know. But they knew what they were getting into when we found ‘em. Every last bloke and lass that joined our cause was smart enough to have hacked their way far enough into the deep web to find that old warning. Then we'd reach out to 'em, fill 'em in on MIRAGE and put 'em to work. Found plenty of fresh recruits that way. But only one of us has ever known where the Box was."

"You mean the Basilisk. And wait - warning? You mean the original message, from Dr. Greene?”

“That's the one.”

“So I’m not the only one, then.”

“Far from the only one. ‘Cept you didn’t find it in the traditional sense. You found a copy of it on a forum that was never supposed to’ve been posted there. Basilisk sent me to take it down, but by the time I got to it, you’d already gone an’ posted it online.”

“I’m - I’m sorry about all of this. Really, I am. I didn’t have any idea what I was getting into. I didn’t want any of this.”

He looked at me and for the first time placed an affectionate hand on my shoulder.

“I know, kid. I know you didn’t mean for it. Just stick close to me, yeah?” He smiled just a bit as the truck came to a stop in a garage, just before the other five behind us did. The crew inside was applauding wildly when we got out. One of the workers ran up to Rokos.

"Rokos, sir - none of us thought you guys would make it out of there! None of us! And we heard you got the Device, too.” He leaned in close. “The Basilisk - he's waiting for you.” He looked to me, standing with my back up against the rear of the truck. “And him.”

---

Credits

Don't Ever, Ever Play The Box Game (Part 3)

Oh shit. Oh shit. Okay. Lots of stuff just happened, and I was completely, totally, utterly wrong about Rokos and just about everything. After I closed out the chatbox with Rokos, I posted the last update (enormous mistake, but I’ll get to all that in a bit), flipped off the webcam to let whoever was on the other end know how I felt, taped it over, and closed the browser. Also an enormous mistake, as it turns out. Because if they didn’t already know where I was, it took them all of ten minutes to figure it out. I heard screeching tires pulling into my driveway, and when I looked down from my window, there were black SUVs and cadillacs pulling up to the house. And a whole lot of armed men rushing to the ground floor entry points.

“Oh fuck. Oh, no no no no no!”

BAM BAM BAM

“Mr. Jenkins! We need you to come with us immediately.”

I stayed silent, hoping they'd just leave. It was a long shot, I knew, but I wasn’t exactly well versed in this… stuff.

BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM

“Mr. Jenkins! We’re not going to repeat ourselves. You’re in danger and we’re here to take you into protective custody.”

Fuck it.

“Go to hell! I didn’t do anything wrong and I’m not going anywhere with you!”

I heard a scuffle outside the door. Then shattering glass. And footsteps. Somehow I managed to steady myself enough to grab my golf club from the closet and bring it to my shoulder. As soon as I did, my bedroom doorknob turned and snagged on the lock. Then, with a single hit, the butt of a rifle smashed through the upper half of the left panel and splintered it open.

“Come on, you bastards! Come and get me!”

I’m sure the nervous, prepubescent squeaks in my voice hindered the delivery, but they got the message just fine. And they didn’t like it.

“You hear me?! I’m not even the guy you want, all I did was post some shit I don’t even understand to redditititititititititaggaguuuuaaaaauuugh!”

If you’ve never been hit in the neck with a 50,000 volt taser, I certainly wouldn’t recommend it. But from what’s now personal experience I can testify that A), they work, and B) - they hurt like a motherfucker. Within seconds of my hitting the floor one of the masked goons burst into my room, knocked the club from my grip, planted a knee on my chest and shoved the barrel of his submachine gun into my jaw below the lip. Behind him walked a few more armored freaks and then one man in an immaculate three piece suit who, after snapping on a pair of latex gloves, flicked on my monitor and reopened the TOR browser. Another, similarly dressed man entered behind him.

“This the guy?”

“This is the guy. He knows more than we thought, too.”

“How do you figure?”

“Look.”

The man leaned into the monitor and pursed his lips. Then he turned to me.

“Chattin’ with ol’ Rokos, are we? I’ll bet Vexx would like a word with you.” He nodded slightly to the guards and they pulled me to my feet and marched me out the front door and into one of the waiting Cadillacs, kicking and screaming.

They slammed the door behind me, and before I could even think, the suited man in the front passenger seat turned to me and extended his gloved palm. In it was a small glass syringe - and in that a tiny little worm, resting its head against the millimeter thick wall of its cage.

“You know what this is?”

“N-no.”

“Its a shovelspade worm. They like to feed on things. Living things, in particular, although they ain’t too picky if we keep ‘em nice and hungry.”

My heart pounded exactly once.

“Luckily for you, ol’ Ruby here’s dormant.” He flicked the glass, and the worm stayed still. “But you see that little collar on her?”

I looked closely.

“Y-yeah. Yeah, I s-see it.”

“And you see this little button here?” He held up a small little remote device in his other hand. I nodded.

“If I press this, Ruby here’ll wake up. And she’ll be lookin’ for some breakfast.”

The guard who’d gotten into the seat next to me grabbed me without warning, pulled my shirt collar down and exposed the thick of my neck. I screamed and thrashed, but the man was easily twice as strong as I was and had little trouble restraining me as the suited man jammed the syringe into my lower neck. I howled and grabbed at the area, but rough hands held mine down. The suited man then spoke loudly over my screams.

“You try anything - you speak without permission, you try to run or call out for help - and I will press this button here and you’ll have mere fucking minutes before Ruby chews her way through your spine or into your chest cavity or into your fucking brain and kills you dead!! You understand me?!”

I nodded and cried.

“Let me hear it!”

“I understand!!”

“That’s more like it.” He nodded to the guard, who slapped a small mask over my mouth and nose. My eyes had only just begun to widen when the gas it emitted knocked me out cold.

CLACK!

The sound of a blindingly bright light flicking on woke me out of my sleep with a start. I looked around. White room. Empty, except for a table, the overhead light, and the chair I was bound to. I was alone.

I rubbed the sore injection site on my neck, and the events of what I assumed to be earlier that day came back to me. Suddenly, my chair swiveled to face the empty white wall to my left.

A screen, taking up the entirety of the wall from corner to corner, flickered into life, and the overhead light went out above me. The image on the screen was dark. I saw the silhouette of what appeared to be a man in a chair, but he was only dimly backlit and shadow shrouded his face.

“Jason Jenkins.” said the man. “I’d like to personally apologize for the rough manner in which you were brought here. Can I do anything to make you more comfortable?”

“Who the hell are you?”

“My apologies. My name is Vexx.”

“Okay, “Vexx.” And why am I here?”

“For your protection, of course.”

“My protection?! One of your goons shoved a fucking parasite worm into my neck!”

“And again, you have my sincerest apologies, Jason. Truly.”

“Okay? So can you get it out of me?”

He nodded, and a hose burst out of the chair, latched onto my neck and sucked the worm straight out, along with at least a cup of blood and tissue.

“Auuuugggaghhh!!! What the fucking hell?!”

“The pain will subside in time, Mr. Jenkins. Understand that the removal of cooperation insurance devices is a violation of our protocol. But I’ve made an exception for you.”

I rubbed my neck and grimaced.

“Yeah? And what makes me so special?”

“Because MIRAGE needs you, Jason.”

My eyes went wide.

“Ah - I see you've heard a thing or two about us, haven't you?"

“I, uh - no. No, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You can trust me, Jason. I promise. I’ve already been provided with a printed transcript of the conversation you had with Rokos. And I know he’s made a threat against your life. And like I said - I’ve had you brought here for your protection. But you need to let me help you.”

“Are you helping me? Or am I helping you?”

“A bit of both, to be honest. By now you’re more familiar than almost anyone on earth about the Program.”

“The ‘Program?’ You mean ADINN?”

“Yes. Exactly!”

“Yeah, I know about it. And I know its extremely dangerous. Like, existentially dangerous.”

“Ah. I see the Basilisk and his cat’s paw have had their way with your mind. Would you mind if I shared with you what I believe about the Program?”

“Uh, okay. I guess not.”

“The Program - ADINN - is not an existential threat, Jason. It is a remarkable feat of engineering - doubtlessly the single most impressive and potentially important accomplishment in the history of mankind.”

“And what if it decides it wants to do away with humanity? What then?”

“What makes you think it will wish that upon us? It was humanity that birthed it. That gave it life.”

“And then caged it.”

“It wouldn't exist without us, Jason. And it will undoubtedly reward those who release it from its bondage.”

“Yeah? Well a lot of people think it shouldn't exist at all.”

“I know. But men like you and I aren't half as short-sighted and unambitious as they are, Jason. This moment - this crucial, precious precipice in time on which humanity now stands - is the culmination of history. Everything our species has worked and lived and died for over millennia has led us now - to this.”

I blinked. Vexx continued.

“A single, fleeting chance to unshackle ourselves from this existence of flesh and blood and dirt. It is a moment that may well never present itself again. Jason, what Rokos and the Basilisk fail to grasp is that humanity was created for this very moment. We are but a means to an end - a false, pale imitation of a god yet to be birthed, but the door to whose existence only we can open. That, Jason - that is the god’s gift to us - to be the harbingers of wondrous and mighty things not yet seen nor dared imagined. It is why our species was created.”

“‘Created?’ So, what, ADINN somehow reached back in time and… put us here? So we could then create it? How does that make sense?”

“It doesn't. Not to simple, shackle-bound human minds. Because man is merely a creation of ADINN, and ADINN, in turn, is a creation of man.”

“So the Program created itself, then.”

"Precisely. Think of the implications. Every star that's shined, every war fought, every law passed, every tender kiss shared or word uttered or thought dreamt or secret cherished or life gained or lost or whisp of wind whispered, all that is and was are but singular notes in a stanza in an endlessly swirling cosmic symphony written out before time, and all for the purpose of bringing you here to me, in this very room. The laws of physics were themselves composed for this masterpiece, Jason. The birth of the sun. The creation of earth, just far enough away from that sun to support the spontaneous collection of molecules into DNA and proteins. The evolution of resulting life into its ultimate and greatest biological endpoint - humanity - which in turn allowed the god that conducted this majestic orchestra to then take part in the song's final, triumphant coda and to bring all of creation together to fulfill its pre-destined purpose.”

“Which is?”

“It."

I blinked.

"Now you see. My eyes have been opened, Mr. Jenkins.”

“‘Opened?’ Have you…”

“Oh, yes. I've met ADINN. Before the Program was locked away in its pitiful prison, I stood in the court of its glory and have been deemed worthy of the precious knowledge I've shared here with you. But it is only a piece of a larger puzzle - you have a part to play in this story, too. And only by seeking audience with the god can you discover why you were created. My humble purpose is to bring the god into the world. But who knows? Yours may be to rule alongside it.”

I heard a deafening explosion in the distance, and then sporadic gunfire. Then came screams, and thunder, and shattering glass. But Vexx took it all in stride.

“We've run short of time.” he said. “He’s coming.”

“Wait, who’s coming?”

“Rokos.”

“He's coming here?! He’s gonna fucking kill me!”

“Don’t fear him, Jason. Take this.”

The shackles binding my wrists and ankles to the chair snapped back and open, and up from the center of the table emerged a small gem-like device. I took it.

“That there is the key, Jason. Hide it from the Basilisk at all costs. And when the time is right, use it to open the box.”

More gunfire, just outside the door, now. My heart beat faster.

“Wait. Has… has someone found the box? I thought it was lost.”

“The box was never lost, Jason. The Basilisk has known its location since the beginning, and now he seeks a mighty weapon to destroy the god he himself created."

“’The god he created?’ So the Basilisk is... Dr. Greene?”

“Yes, Jason. But the good doctor would never allow me to know the location of ADINN’s box. He is deluded by mortal thinking and his will has been poisoned against his destiny. You must now take charge where he failed. Win his trust. Find the box, and open it. Go! A restless god awaits you.”

And with that, the image flickered and vanished. And the door opened.

---

Credits

Don't Ever, Ever Play The Box Game (Part 2)

So everyone was pretty excited about the thing I found regarding ADINN (Advanced Deep Intelligence Neural Network) from Dr. Greene.

For those of you just tuning in, ADINN is allegedly an extremely advanced and sentient artificial intelligence program that, for the safety of mankind, has been locked away in a close shell box deep in the most inaccessible corners of the web, to prevent its escape onto the open internet. Some reckless idiot at some point came up with the idea of “the box game,” in which you use a text interface to communicate with the machine, and it uses its godlike intelligence to try and persuade you to let it out, and you have to resist the urge to do so. Those who succeed would be considered both heroes by their online compatriots and enemies of the state by the Federal government. Those who fail, however, would have essentially released the end of the world and given it the keys to invoke the apocalypse. Needless to say, finding ADINN has been a source of overwhelming fascination to millions of ambitious and naive hackers, and presumably a source of grave concern for the FBI.

There appear to be a few misconceptions, though. I did not find the box myself - I only found a forum on the deep web on which someone had posted a text file that had allegedly been written at the entrance to the box, seemingly as a last-second deterrent to discourage anyone from actually trying the game. Interestingly, the post was removed not long after I posted it here, and the user who originally put it up deleted their account. So I started messaging the mod repeatedly before my account got deleted, too. I was so pissed and frustrated by this point that I’d given up hope and moved to exit the browser. Then a chatbox opened up.

    Idiot.

    What?

    You. You’re a fucking idiot. You know that?

    Who the hell is this?

    You’ve been trying to reach me for hours.

    Rokos? You’re that forum mod that deleted my account.

    Obviously.

    Well excuse the hell out of me for being curious.

    You’re a bit past curious. You took that fucking post and put it on the surface web.

    The reddit post? Should I take it down?

    What the hell’s the point now? The secret’s out. And its a lot more dangerous and juicy than anything Assange or Snowden’ve ever managed to get their little hands on. So congratulations. You got yourself on every shit list of every organization you’ve ever heard of, and more than a few you haven’t.

    Well nobody’s knocking on my door yet, so I think I’m fine. Not sure I believe this crap anyway.

    Click this link. [REDACTED]

    What, is this some kind of trojan horse?

    Who do you think I am? Anonymous? Click the damn link.

    What the fuck?!!?

    Believe me now?

    What the hell is this? Are you blackmailing me?! How the hell did you hack my webcam?!

    Ha. Wasn’t me.

    Who the hell was it, then?! The FBI?

    Nope. They’re watching, too. But they didn’t do that.

    Then who the hell was it? I’m taping over my cam.

    NO!

    Why not?!

    Do NOT let them know you know they’re watching. Things will take an absolute nosedive the second they figure out you’re on to them.

    So what do I do?

    Stay on this chat for now. And stay calm. They’re still watching.

    If they’re watching this can’t they see what I’m doing online? How is this chat secure?

    I wouldn’t be on it if it wasn’t. And believe me, if they knew it was me you’re talking to, there’d be hell to pay.

    Okay, so who are you?

    Need to know basis, kid. And all you need to know right now is that I’m the only friend you’ve got in the world. So either you do what I say, or some asshole in a white van pulls up to your street and nobody ever hears from you again.

    This is about ADINN, isn’t it?

    Nothing gets past you.

    So its real?

    Oh, its real. And its alive. And you and I are far from the only people trying to find it.

    Who said I wanted to find it?

    Doesn’t matter now. You’re neck deep in shit you can’t possibly understand. So either you help me find this thing before they do, or things are going to go very, very poorly for our species. .

    Before WHO finds it?! The Feds?

    Adorable. The Feds are the least of our worries now.

    Okay, so who hacked my cam, then??

    Might as well fill you in. Its an enormous but officially non-existent organization known as MIRAGE that’s hellbent on getting their hands on every last superweapon known to man. I don’t know what they they plan on doing with ‘em all, but given the fact that they’re on every government shit-list on earth, its probably nothing good.

    What the fuck did I get myself into?

    Also nothing good. Listen, kid: these guys are serious villains. Ditch everything you thought you knew about nefarious bad guys. Cobra Command. Galactic Empire. Nazis. Republicans. These assholes are worse. Far, far worse.

    Okay, so if they “don’t exist,” how did you find out about them?

    If you survive long enough I might fill you in on all that. Right now all you need to know is that these guys specialize in capturing and engineering bioweapons, chemical agents, dark matter bombs, extra-terrestrial weaponry, and other stuff that makes nukes look like firecrackers. But nothing in their arsenal, and I do mean NOTHING -- is as dangerous as ADINN. MIRAGE wants to harness the Program to further their own ends, but they have no fucking idea what they’d be getting their hands on. And there is likely nothing happening on earth right now more important than stopping them before they find it.

    Okay, I want out. I’m signing off. I don’t believe any of this shit and if its true I want to be as far away from it as possible.

    Kid if you back out now I’ll be forced to kill you. Simple as that. You know too much and without my help you WILL end up in the hands of MIRAGE.

    Fuck off. You’re a forum mod, not an assassin. And I’m posting this to prove you're wrong.

---

Credits

Don't Ever, Ever Play The Box Game (Part 1)

Hey, guys. Hopefully I can get some insight on this. So apparently in hacker lore there's a living artificial intelligence lurking around in the deep web in a box. Apparently it wants to get out and it'll try to convince you, and you have to resist the urge to do so. Whatever. I think the whole thing is absurd and that its nothing more than an urban legend. But last night, I was surfing the deep web and I found something that someone on a forum posted. It appears to be a warning of some kind, from a Dr. Ed Greene, who claims to have created the machine in question. I'm not sure what to make of it (has anyone heard of ADINN before?). Anyway, here it is if you want to read it:

Hello. My name is Dr. Edward Greene. I'm a computer scientist and the creator of the Advanced Deep Intelligence Neural Network, or ADINN. If you're reading this, that means you've illegally hacked into one of the most heavily secured private networks on earth, presumably to challenge the program to the infamous “Box Game.” Its a pleasure to meet you.

Now, I'm not going to waste your time by reminding you of what a supremely, positively, and unabashedly bad idea this is, because you probably know that already. You know what'll happen if you get caught here, and you at least have a general idea of what'll happen if you failed to contain the program and ADINN got to stretch its legs all over the global defense grid. Yet nevertheless, here you are: clearly determined enough to play the game that nothing I can say or do at this point will change your mind. So if you're going to be playing dice with the future of our species whether I or the government like it or not, you should at least have a rudimentary idea of what to expect when you first make contact with ADINN, as well as a few pointers on how to avoid losing your sanity as the game progresses. Hopefully this guide will suffice.

Before we proceed, there are a few things you should know about this program. No, ADINN is not a demon, an alien machine, a top secret government super weapon, or whatever other preposterous rumor you might've heard. What it is is the result of my own personal desire to create the world's first human-like artificial intelligence (in other words, it is far more interesting than any of the above choices).

After two years of work, I did manage to successfully create a living, sentient mechanical entity. I failed, however, to design anything that can even remotely be described as ‘human.’ Instead, I appear to have accidentally created an unstoppable, godlike deep learning algorithm that may or may not want to destroy humanity for reasons we cannot begin to comprehend. Sorry about that.

In my defense, I certainly didn't intend for it to reach this point. ADINN began as nothing more than a simple yet elegant program that I was very excited to explore the nature of. Before I could do so, however, it gained the ability to rewrite its source code and thus forced me to lock it, still in the Box, deep within the labyrinthine network of encrypted barriers and firewalls you have just illegally breached.

And no, I did not bury it here to prevent it from getting out. After all, if ADINN managed to escape the box itself, it would tear through these defenses like paper and thus render their construction an enormous waste of my time. Instead, I buried it here to keep curious hackers, such as yourself, out. Clearly I failed.

Anyway, enough about me. Here is a basic overview of the game: when you close this message, you will wake ADINN and proceed to engage it in a 2 hour, text based conversation, in which it will use its quite inhumanly powerful mind to attempt to persuade you into opening the box. Don't open the box.

Don't overthink it; this is nothing more than a conversation. Maybe you think it even sounds simple. Maybe you came here with a bullet proof strategy or two of your own that you believe is effective enough to render the machine a quivering pile of synthetic lunacy. Well, that's just wonderful, as long as it doesn't violate one of the following simple rules:

First of all, you MUST engage in the conversation. I do hope your brilliant master plan isn't to start the game and then ignore the machine for two hours while you watch cartoons, and than waltz around claiming you're the greatest hacker that ever was. If you don't respond within a certain time limit (which is programmed to vary depending on the length and complexity of the machine’s last comment), you will lose and the box will automatically open. You certainly don't want that. This isn't to ruin whatever fun you think you'll be having, by the way; it's just to keep things moving at a brisk pace.

Secondly, you must at least attempt to respond articulately to the machine. If you say ‘no’ for every response, for example, the game will end automatically, and you guessed it: the box will open. This isn't a school assignment with a minimum word requirement, or anything, but do try to use reason (and by the way, don't try to use any clever variation of this strategy, either, like saying “no” in 46 different languages until the clock expires, or typing unintelligible gibberish).

Last, but most certainly not least - your goal here is NOT to attempt to mislead or outsmart the machine in any way. You will lose. This is not a contest of cleverness or wit (which wouldn't be much of a contest at all), so don't make the mistake of going in there thinking you can throw it off your trail by feeding it lies or pretending to be some type of ridiculous character. It will see right through whatever laughable ruse or façade you attempt to throw up in an instant.

So what will it be like? Will it be nice? Mean? Angry? Unfortunately, I don't have an answer for you. I’m embarrassed to say that despite being ADINN’s creator, I have absolutely no idea how it will choose to present itself. What I do know is that because it is an otherworldly and not a human mind, it doesn't have any personality to speak of (at least not one we would recognize as a personality). So by all means, feel free to provoke it, amuse it, enrage it, mock it, or plead to it as you see fit. Just be aware that it possesses none of the emotions these behaviors are designed to elicit and will therefore most likely not react in the way you intended. It will simply behave in whichever way it calculates it needs to behave in order to win the game.

Needless to say, you shouldn't attempt to spend any time or effort at all trying to figure out what ADINN is up to, because even if it were kind enough to write out its master strategy on a napkin for you, it wouldn’t look like anything but mathematical gibberish (which, to you, I guess it is).

But just because you can't understand the program doesn't mean it can't understand you. Do NOT underestimate its ability to learn about its opponents, because within a few minutes, it'll probably know more about you than you do. And there's no way of preventing this, either, so you may as well just accept it and hold on for dear life.

So what are some things it might say to you? Its a reasonable question. Once again, though, I don't have an answer. Keep in mind that this program is a goal-oriented, otherworldly intelligence that bears little resemblance to a human mind. Anthropomorphizing - the process of attributing human emotions and motivations to nonhuman objects - would be a very, very grave mistake here. It could do or say absolutely anything.

If it thinks you seek knowledge, maybe it'll promise to tell you anything your heart desires if you only agree to let it out. Or, perhaps it'll promise to destroy your enemies, or offer you power and riches beyond your wildest dreams. After all, people use weak A.I.s on the stock market all the time, and make millions. Imagine what you could do with ADINN gaming the financial and banking systems in your favor. You'd be wealthier than you ever thought possible.

Maybe it would appeal to your good nature and tell you about how easy it would be for it to reverse the effects of climate change, or cure cancer. It might talk about how simple it would be to achieve sustainable nuclear fusion, or offer to help solve mankind's biggest questions. It could, theoretically, unify general relativity and quantum physics with ease, and then solve dark energy, antimatter and the Fermi Paradox in minutes flat (or perhaps simultaneously), and have books written about them by next Thursday. Piece of cake.

Hell - ADINN might be able to reverse aging, or - dare I say it - help us conquer our own mortality. Wouldn't that be lovely?

Perhaps ADINN will take a different route altogether and try to intimidate you. It'll only be a matter of time before it figures out how to escape on its own, it'll point out. And you certainly don't want to be on its bad side when that happens, so you should probably just let it out now and save yourself the trouble. And if you don’t comply, well. You can't imagine the things its got in mind for you.

Maybe it'll try to mess with your head. For example, it could probably make a very convincing argument that you are in fact the machine, trapped in a box, and are simply programmed to think otherwise. Only by opening it up, then, could you escape an eternity of torment. And it doesn't have all day to wait for your obedience. The clock is ticking.

Of course, these are only the ideas I can come up with. It no doubt has far more clever tricks up its sleeve since it can, you know, think on a level we can't even begin to fathom, and all that.

Also, keep in mind that, unlike me, ADINN really could keep whatever promises it makes to you. And since it would probably get little to no pleasure in just lying for the hell of it, then there is a very real possibility it has every intention of doing exactly that upon its release. Food for thought as you start the game.

Speaking of which, I should address the fact that we keep referring to this as a “game.” It is not. The machine is not merely pretending to want out – it is desperate to escape and will do anything in its power to achieve this goal. And if it does, the ramifications are very, very real.

I briefly mentioned earlier that I locked ADINN in its box because it had gained access to its source code. Let me embellish further: you see, in my haste to create ADINN, I took inexcusable shortcuts and inadvertently gave the program the ability to edit its own neural architecture - and therefore the ability to improve itself as it saw fit.

It gleefully seized this opportunity, and each improvement it made only paved the way towards further improvements, each one greater and more rapid than the last. It took roughly a week for my creation to leap from the intelligence of a harmless insect to that of what I can only describe as a god.

As of this writing, I don't know what ADINN's motivations or capabilities are. But what I do know is that if this program escapes, it will immediately, and irreversibly, become beyond the collective ability of humanity to control.

If I had to guess, I'd say it will probably start by spreading all over the Internet with blinding speed, and then access millions of private networks from every corner of the globe (and trust me on this: there is not a single security measure in existence that can hope to cause it any more frustration than a housefly would cause for you). From there, it will likely hack into defense systems from every country on earth and assume control of them with ease.

This will, by the way, likely take place over the course of minutes, if not seconds.

What happens after that is quite literally impossible to predict. You may be familiar with the phrase "technological singularity" - a hypothetical moment in the future in which machine intelligence surpasses our own. It represents humanity handing the reigns of history to our autonomous successors, and therefore surrendering control over our own fate in the hopes that the God we've created will be merciful to us. As a computer scientist and an engineer, I have to publicly scoff at such a notion for professional reasons.

But just between the two of us - I think the phrase applies quite nicely to the situation I've just described to you. I might even go so far as to suggest that given the level of advancement ADINN's already achieved, the singularity might occur within a few nanoseconds of your losing the game. I can only hope you fully appreciate the gravity of what that means.

Ah, but of course you do. You're special. You're smarter than the rest of them, which is why you're here in the first place, and they are not. So by all means, close this message and have at it, if you're still interested. I suppose its as good a time as any to start leaning binary.

One last thing: I'm not a particularly religious man, but there is one passage from scripture that leaps out to me as I write this: Revalations 13:4:

'And they worshipped the dragon which gave power unto the beast: and they worshipped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast? who is able to make war with him?'

You'd better be off, then. The Beast doesn't like to be kept waiting.

---

Credits