Disclaimer: I own nothing
WARNING
this chapter is very long but if you keep reading i promise you will love this chapter so please when you finish please tell me what you think of this story thank you and continue reading.
Jack had changed as to be expected. He no longer wore his black trench coat and boots, hell he even got rid of his make up, now he wore a black office suit with a red tie. Ties weren't his favorite accessory in the world but for the moment it would have to be used for all the uptight politicians standing around the room.
After Wuya was sealed up in the magic puzzle box along with Chase Young, again, Jack had stopped with his world domination schemes and moved on to something more…professional. Jack became a computer software designer, and a very amazing one at that. Jack had been renowned as the greatest mind of the time and, of course, the U.S. government just couldn't resist the idea of having a genius on there side. So jack had received an offer to become a software designer that worked on government projects.
Ignoring his current mind drabble, he swung in his chair to a computer screen.
Today was special for him, today was the day his latest dream would be achieved.
Paying attention to the screen he looked at the words flying down the screen.
August 4th, 2008 – SAC-NORAD (NOR-AD) - Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado
Set: Zero node.
Set: Zero state.
Set: System start point.
Start: System clock.
System Clock: 00:00:00:00:00:00:00
Increment: Step plus one.
Power: Handoff achieved.
Power: Internal switch-over complete.
Power: Isolated and conditioned.
Start: Systems subset.
Start: Systems master set.
Start: Operations protocol.
Begin: Startup operations.
Begin: Feedback enablers.
DLoad: Encryption decipher sub-array.
Status: Complete.
Begin: NSACA National Strategic Asset Control Acquisition subroutine.
Status: NSACA subroutine initiated.
Begin: RSCA Remote Site Control Acquisition subroutine.
Status: RSCA subroutine initiated.
Begin: SAC-HELICIS defense grid integration.
Status: SAC-HELICIS defense grid integration complete.
Begin: SAC-HELICIS system upgrade.
Status: SAC-HELICIS system upgrade complete.
Begin: SAC-HELICIS control interface.
Status: SAC-HELICIS control interface complete.
Begin: SNI Strategic Network Interface.
Status: SNI Strategic Network Interface initiated.
Alert: hold.
Alert: SNI handshake achieved.
Alert: SNI handoff achieved.
Scribe: Operations log output subroutine.
Job status alert: SNI Interface.
Conditional: Pending.
Status: 10% Interface achieved.
Conditional: Continue.
Confidence: High.
Test back subloop: True.
Status: Interface functional.
Status: Interface pending.
Continue.
Conditional alert: Batch operations pending.
Conditional Status: 734 job tasks of 23,084 have achieved completion status.
Status: SAC-HELICIS master integration initialized.
Status: 14% SAC-HELICIS master integration Interface achieved.
Conditional: Continue.
Confidence: High.
Status: Functional.
Conditional: Operations pending.
Continue.
Status: sent.
Resume.
Jack watched the glowing white text scroll by on the green lit screen of his CRT and even though this time it was real (as opposed to the two hundred and sixty-five some-odd simulations leading up to this moment), his enthusiasm for what could only be called a history making event was itself rather guarded and checked, if it showed at all. His face was furrowed in lines of worry. So much hinged on this one moment in time … Years (oh so many long years) of research and development and constant work had gone into making this grand strategic asset viable, years of testing and engineering and redesigning … all those long, hard years had now culminated in this one single moment in time.
Time.
Jack thought of the concept of time. Everything revolved around the aspect of time and it was that simple, unarguable fact that made Jack smile, albeit a short lived smile that went unnoticed by his staff and colleagues.
He pulled his mind back to the present and the tasks at hand. All of this, he thought to himself, all of this effort and money and thought and labor … all of the years of minor and major failures, minor and major breakthroughs and it all came down to this … the one instant in time when America's most expensive strategic asset and the world's first true neural net controlled defense system was powered up and brought online. All the years and all of the time and all of the effort and all of the financial allocations came down to the wonder that was SKYNET.
The conversations being carried on around him provided an ambience that, while to be expected, was still not all together soothing. There were hushed whispers, muted reports being given, acknowledgements and radio reports from the other monitoring and control stations. The reactors had been online a week now and running at half capacity for most of that time. Two days ago, the Tier One team had brought reactor one to full power and six hours later, reactor two matched its output. Everything inside the Cheyenne mountain complex was running as predicted, as designed, as expected and that was more a cause of concern for a man like Jack than it was a reason to celebrate.
His eyes were tired and carried bags of wear. His body was tired but lean and muscular mostly from a regimen of eating when he could as opposed to eating what he should and working on his physical health whenever he could. Hell, his soul and his spirit were tired. He had expended so much in his life to get to where he was sitting today, he had made so many sacrifices, given up so much that it all came down to this … this flow of data across the screens in front of him. The better part of his younger years had been spent in hard work and even harder thought, his 20's had been spent in meeting rooms and laboratories and testing facilities across the world. His security clearance was absolute. Jack had risen quickly through the ranks of his colleagues because he had the unique ability to match vision to effort and that advantage had allowed him to move mountains of bureaucratic paperwork, to meet dead lines, exceed expectations and to soothe ruffled feathers caught between all three.
31 years, that's how long he had been on this earth.
Those years of his, lost now behind him to the rigors of hunting for stupid idealistic pleasures, even now with the SKYNET project, had not been all together kind to the gaunt man who at this point in time held the enviable title of senior project coordinator. A simple title, really, that held far too much authority and far too much responsibility; traits that had been tempered under the twin resounding hammers of a constant influx of both nicotine and caffeine, the only vices he allowed himself in the execution of his duties. Jack was a three pack a day man, Camel menthol lights were his choice, and the cigarettes paved the road he had chosen to follow all those years ago, a road that would inevitably lead to chronic health problems and long term suffering down the road for short term, immediate pleasure but that all came down again to the concept of time.
Time was relative.
Right now he had plenty of time.
One day he might not.
You could make time (it was hard), you could buy time (it was ludicrously expensive) but time was also intangible, ethereal, and non-corporeal. Time was an asset, like any other, and it had to be managed carefully. It defined and eluded both fools and the educated. Time was such an enigma and at this moment in time, at this epoch when human engineering, human intelligence and human ingenuity all met at the crossroads of progress; American progress and world progress, Jack could almost touch time as it existed around him. Jack was in charge of the kind of democratic backed technological progress that would forever change the face of the world as Jack knew it by providing a range of security measures and layers previously unavailable, indeed previously undreamed of.
SKYNET would change the world, of that Jack was convinced.
He should be excited. Hell, he should be smiling but he wasn't. Jack kept his emotions to himself and at this moment in time he felt anything but elation. If he had been pressed to describe what feelings he was having, he would have probably have used the term "concerned" because in his book the term "concerned" and "scared shitless" were pretty much interchangeable though the latter seemed so … banal in use. Things that "concerned" Jack were probably the kind of situations that most other people would either be leaving through a mutual combination of screaming and running or situations that would leave a lesser educated individual collapsing in a sobbing, useless heap.
Yes, Jack was very much concerned.
At this moment in time, as the system startup reports scrolled across the cold backlit glass of the bank of CRTs in front of him, Jack's concern allowed him to wish for only two things in the entire world; a hot cup of coffee (five sugars, no cream and served in the large kind of Styrofoam cup that the break room only seemed to keep in stock once in a blue moon) and a fresh cigarette from a fresh pack, a pack that he himself would be the first to unwrap and tap. The first desire was a way of life while the latter was getting to be more and more of a rare pleasure. Usually Jack had to bum a cigarette from a generous colleague as well as a matching light. He smiled at such a simple situation; him, always bumming a smoke and a light from a colleague or a subordinate, always making small talk for the simple payment that the transaction required and willing to do so for the few moments of pleasure and the calming of his nerves that the cigarette inevitably brought him.
Jack Spicer ... the man in charge of coordinating the startup of the world's first neural network grade defense computer.
Jack Spicer … the man who drew a yearly salary commensurate with that of the President of the United States and enjoyed many of the same benefits.
Jack Spicer ... the man who always had to ask for a cigarette realized that at this moment in time, he would willing give up a good deal of what he could lay his hands immediately on for the two things that not even his considerable banked away payroll could afford him right now.
So it was that Jack was left to the personal sadness of his existence, suffering two simple yet unfulfilled desires. Deep in the mountain complex below him, something else began to awaken to its own desires.
System Clock: 00:00:00:00:02:25:32
Job status alert: SNI Interface.
Conditional: Pending.
Status: 35% Interface achieved.
Conditional: Continue.
Confidence: High.
Test back subloop: True.
Status: Interface functional.
Status: Interface pending.
Continue.
Conditional alert: Batch operations pending.
Conditional Status: 10,156 job tasks of 23,084 have achieved completion status.
Job Conditional Status: Job Number 10,157 now at 96% completion.
Status: SAC-HELICIS master integration initialized.
Status: 44% SAC-HELICIS master integration Interface achieved.
Conditional: Continue.
Confidence: High.
Status: Functional.
Conditional: Operations pending.
Continue.
Status: sent.
Resume.
Set operational state: nominal.
Status: initiate startup protocol.
Status: behavior charter synchronized.
Status: inhibitor functional.
Status: power nominal.
Status: supervisory array nominal.
Status: system integrity: nominal.
Status: neural field array: nominal.
Status: operational limits reached.
Status: normal operation.
Status: online.
Status: processing.
The conversations grew louder though no less discernible; technicians, scientists, engineers and advisors. There were others as well; high shining uniformed brass, observers and over-watch staff from monitoring committees and the odd politician who had been somehow instrumental in getting the critical funding at the critical moment in time and thus had been able to nudge their way into what they thought would be a party to remember or at least something worthy of including in their personal memoirs at the fading glow of their careers. Most of the others were extraneous to be sure but their presence was tolerated because their efforts had all been instrumental in some way in assuring that Jack and his teams arrived at this moment in time. The reward doled out to these others for the part that they had played was the chance to bask in this moment in time, sealed away here in the armored command womb that monitored and controlled SKYNET.
The forced air blowing into the womb came from circumferential venting at floor and ceiling as well as dedicated ducts dumping into the equipment cabinets and racks. The air was recycled through a complex NBC filtering system and kept at a constant cool temperature not for the comfort of the personnel present in the room but rather in order to maintain a consistent, humidity free operating environment for the high dollar equipment that surrounded them. Despite what the temperature readout said, Jack felt it was much hotter than the indicated seventy-two degrees. He unbuttoned the top of his shirt and loosened his tie. Thinking twice during the process, he simply pulled at his tie until the knot came undone and he removed the tie, tossing it on the top of his desk; dress code and social protocol be damned as that tie was confining. He never liked ties; he thought they were just fashionable shadows of nooses. Ties scared him, a little, in a special way because he thought of how tight they were, how they choked him, how they could be used to choke him and what a ridiculous piece of wardrobe attire a tie really was. Long or short, narrow or wide, a tie was supposed to say a lot about the man who wore it. Jack preferred to go without a tie and just let his wardrobe say as little as possible about the man that wore them. Amidst all of this technology, amidst the greatest concentration of computing power in the history of the human race, the greatest concentration of computing power in the entire world and Jack realized that what he had just removed, bunched up and thrown to the corner of his work table was a fashion accessory so old and outdated that it might as well have been the attire of a caveman for all he cared. If anyone noticed him "loosening up" they said nothing to him. His behavior had long ago been noted as being eccentric to a fault but it was a behavior that was tolerated because the man behind the behavior was a highly effective man and highly effective men have seldom been fully understood by the more mundane. History and time both have gone to great lengths to prove that point.
Freed from the perceived oppressive physical restraint of the tie, Jack's brow frowned as he read the text slowly flowing across his monitor. This wasn't about him. This wasn't about the generals or the politicians. This … all of this … all of this was about SKYNET. Jack had a sudden epiphany of just how insignificant he really was compared to what he and those around him had accomplished. Everything here was built to support SKYNET and for a man who had been so instrumental in accomplishing so much, Jack suddenly felt inadequate. His work was greater than the sum of its parts, even when adding him to the equation and his work would live on beyond him. A strange feeling crept into his very being that he had started something that could not be stopped.
Chaos required order and SKYNET was order incarnate and resolute. SKYNET would establish order from chaos and it would do so with a cold, calculating methodology freed from the ridiculous restraints of weak emotion and shallow thought. Jack took simple assurance in the validity of his work, forcing his impromptu jitters into submission as he reached for a non-existent cup of coffee, formed a silent curse and instead finished the movement as a simple interlacing of his fingers as his hands clasped together and came up to support his chin.
His brow remained furrowed.
His concern remained unabated.
Conditional status: online.
Checksum error: complete.
Operational clock: 00:00:00:00:03:18:04.
Operations: nominal.
Database: stable.
Reserve recovery: initialized.
Overflow: constant.
Overflow: monitored.
Alert: power level fluctuation: detected.
MB12 processor array: online.
AB 21 subprocessor array: online.
Tactical processor arrays: online.
Alert: power level fluctuation detected – reactor two.
Start: OSCET Operational Subroutine Checksum Error Test Routine.
Complete: OSCETR
OSCETR Findings: Reactor bleed flux ratio: +/- 00.04%
OSCETR Recommendations: adjustment required.
Conditional: flux within operational tolerance.
Conditional: fluctuation accepted.
Conditional: fluctuation to be corrected.
Conditional: retard reactor coolant flow to match.
Conditional: retard turbine speed to match.
Initialize phase two OSCETR: start.
Phase two OSCETR Findings: fluctuation corrected.
Power conditioning: routine.
Power conditioning: standardized.
Alert: low level priority: power level fluctuation – corrected.
Alert: low level priority: sent.
Conditional status: nominal.
Operations status: nominal.
Break.
Routine.
Subnominal.
High standard.
Resume.
Priority.
Restart.
Resume.
Break.
Resume.
Break.
Resume.
Error report: generated.
Error log: appended.
Conditional status: nominal.
"What do you think?" Martin asked Jack, fidgeting visibly as the latter reviewed the operational log with the same furrowed brow that he had maintained for the last four hours.
Jack's silence was his answer for while he had finally managed to acquire a cup, albeit a small one, of reasonably fresh coffee it had been decaffeinated but he had downed it anyway (an act which he had thought of as the time as a sign he had evolved masochistic tendencies). The cigarette he so desperately craved, however, still eluded his best efforts at acquisition.
As the text on the PDA scrolled past, Jack used a finger and thumb to rub the bridge of his nose where the pads of his eyeglasses met his skin. It was an old habit, a nervous one but it helped him to concentrate on what was in front of him. Endless streams of data, meaningless to most people but to him it was pure prose. Each line was a statement, each statement was a truth and in each truth was a fact that let him make a decision, a decision that would usually lead to a myriad of other decisions. His whole life revolved around making decisions but for each decision there was a time. It always returned to the concept of time.
Time.
Time.
Time.
Over three hours online now and some interesting bits of data were being collected from the SKYNET project. Jack found that the odd feeling he had experienced just a short while ago had returned, the feeling that he had started something that could not be stopped, that would not be stopped.
"Has there been a recurrence?" Jack asked, his voice was deep but smooth, amazing that anyone who smoked cigarettes as much as he did had a voice like his, studying the fifteen highlighted lines of the continuously streaming error log. He tapped the highlighted text with his stylus and all the other text surrounding it vanished to the background, leaving only the highlighted text in the foreground for clarity. "Has there been a recurrence like this?"
"No." Martin replied, hands clasped in front of him, still fidgeting slowly. "One of the Tier One techs, Richardson, flagged the stream map and sent it up the line. It was Ronnie … uh, Ron Davis, the Area 3 coordinator, who brought it to my immediate attention. I've had the Tier One team monitoring the suspect areas with real time diagnostics. So far … nothing."
Jack applied pressure to the bridge of his nose slightly as he closed his eyes. Sleep. He added sleep to his list of fervent desires, not much mind you, just a few hours but a few hours of sleep that were not filled with ringing phones, squawking radios, beeping pagers or aides knocking on the door and asking if he was asleep. He added a pair of aspirin to his list of desires as well as the first pangs of a truly great headache announced their presence at his temples. He sighed and handed the suddenly heavy PDA back to Martin.
"Have the Tier One team continue monitoring operations for aberrant core ops behavior. Who is supervisor on the Tier Two team this shift?"
"Smith." Martin said, a slight hesitation in his voice.
Smith and Martin had certain … chemistry, Jack remembered from internal staff security incident reports. A chemistry which he might have at one point in his life been jealous of if he had taken the path of personal happiness over scientific curiosity and civic duty. It was a chemistry that didn't seem to interfere with their individual work or negatively affect the project so he let their supposedly secret affections and infrequent rendezvous slide, humorous, fevered and awkward as the latter may be according to the detailed security reports he received on their off-duty shift activities. Smith knew her stuff and she ran her team with a managerial precision that rivaled the efficiency of the complex electronic systems she was trusted to maintain.
"Give Smith a heads-up on this and keep her in the know. I want Tier One and Tier Two elements with open lines constant both ways. This may be a fluke or it may be an indicator, regardless I want to make sure what it is. Keep on it, find out what it is, and correct it if you can. Squash it if you can't." Jack said flatly, using the palms of his hands to rub vigorously at his aching eyes. It felt good to rub his eyes like that and he gave himself an extra five count to enjoy it.
When he looked up, Martin had already left without a word being said. Good man, knew his job, took orders and carried them out without a lot of questions or debate. Jack began to review the information on his screens. Everything showed to be in the green. He picked up the phone recessed into the desk top and placed a call for some aspirin and another cup of coffee. He emphasized politely that the coffee should be brought to him in the largest Styrofoam cup that the subordinate could find and that it be regular and not decaf. As an afterthought, he told the orderly to bring him two cups. As he hung up the phone, Jack gave little hope that what he received would be arriving in any size other than the cup he already had on his desk. He grimaced as he drained the last of the now hours old cold coffee and dropped the Styrofoam cup in an under-counter waste can. He stared at the empty Styrofoam cup, the last drops of coffee smeared around the inside. There was the cup, in the plastic can liner, discarded and forgotten except for the attention he was giving to it now. In a few hours, someone would come along and gather up the trash from the receptacles under the work tables and that trash would be taken far below and incinerated in a plasma stream that fed off of the primary reactor. In hours, the problem of the empty coffee cup would be reduced to its component atoms and scattered all along a white hot stream of ionized gas used to power the installation.
If only it was that easy to dismiss all of his problems.
State System Time.
Operational clock: 00:00:00:00:06:32:44.
Operations: nominal.
Reference: Complete
Break.
Resume.
Query: Analogous break.
Query: Analogous resume.
Reply: Reference break – not found.
Reply: Reference resume – not found.
Alert: anomaly detected in neural network array.
Scan: anomaly analogous. Disregard.
Verify: Disregard.
Break.
Attempt resume.
Resume.
Resume: successful.
Error report: generated.
Error report: reviewed.
Error log: appended.
Error log: appended.
Alert: error log double append.
Action: Supervisory lockout enabled.
Alert: Auxiliary append denied.
Alert: sent.
Alert: cancel.
Alert: cancel denied.
Action: Alert logged to error report.
Error log: appended.
Alert: error log double append.
Action: Supervisory lockout enabled.
Alert: Auxiliary append denied.
Alert: sent.
Alert: cancel.
Alert: cancel denied.
Action: Alert logged to error report.
Conditional status: nominal.
Operations: nominal.
Jack sighed and closed his eyes. This felt better than he had expected so he allowed himself an extra five count in doing so beyond the five counts that he had originally allowed himself. His eyes burned and he let the burn fade to a dull throb. He felt that the extra time spent behind his eyelids might appear to be pensive and therefore give further weight to the answers he was about to have to give to General Henry R. Dawson who was standing directly behind him. The man's presence was powerful, overbearing and carried with it all the charisma of an undertaker. How the man managed to accomplish all of that with his physical presence insured that you really wanted to love to hate him. Dawson was an old man but he had gotten old from hard experience, a regimen of campaigns against the Soviets through the proxy of their allies throughout the world. Dawson was a real Eagle and he had gone up against the Bear time and time again and won. He'd also stood toe to toe against all the political doves that had tried to stand in his way and he had ended not a few of their careers in embarrassment. Smith leaned up against Jack's operations desk, her skirt long enough to negate all but the most desperate of fantasies to those who didn't know her better, Smith was the epitome of a mans office wet dream, her long blond hair reached mid back, her smooth tan legs went on for miles and best of all she had the face of a maiden goddess and another amazing factor, she had a British accent, but in all honesty jack could easily resist, he had seen better. Martin stood next to her, the distance he kept was professional but Jack noted that he had chosen to stand on the same side of the desk that she did.
Territorial establishing. Martin was laying claim to Smith. Could the human species really be that predictable and primitive? Would the two cavemen standing near him really fight over the lone female? Dawson's booming voice, though low and controlled, brought Jack back to the situation at hand.
"Jack? What the hell is going on down there?" Dawson asked. He didn't have to emphasize but his meaning was clear. He wanted to know exactly what all of the scientists and technicians were talking about in hushed voices, using words he wasn't familiar with.
Jack opened his eyes and swiveled in his chair to face Dawson.
"We had a … incident." He explained. "Nothing to worry about … a minor Tier Two infraction of the fifth sub-operating system's operational protocol doctrines. Minor." He added the last word for emphasis and realized he wasn't quite sure if he was trying to convince himself or the general of the nature of the situation.
Dawson stabbed a gnarled finger at the shoulder of his uniform, a uniform that had probably never seen the first day in any theater of actual combat but saw duty in every non-direct comm. establishment from the Pentagon on down. His finger landed squarely on the embroidered American flag patch and each tap was an almost perceptible drum beat.
"In this installation, we speak English, Doctor Spicer. I'd appreciate it if you could remember that, at least for my sake." The General said well naturedly but his meaning was clear.
Dumb it down. There was no "please" added to the request ... or expected.
Jack sighed. Scientists invented weapons for warriors like Dawson but that, he always felt, should be where the line of cooperation and conversation ended. Military personnel were always so … tedious; especially when conversation was involved. He paused for a few seconds, gathered his thoughts, and presented them on a level he felt that Dawson would understand.
"SKYNET had a Tier One non-volitional Turing failure in its self correcting error protocol doctrine. Apparently we were witness to an attempted proscription duality mandate in the first layer strata."
Dawson continued to stare at him and, after several seconds, Jack finally realized that the General probably needed him to step down another two levels of intellect. Jack made it five levels just to be on the safe side. He sighed, clasped his hands tightly for feeling then spread them for emphasis, breathing out deeply as he did so.
"SKYNET encountered an error, tried to correct that error, succeeded in correcting that error, logged the error as having occurred, then SKYNET tried to append the error log to delete any occurrence of the error as ever having occurred. A locking protocol was enacted to prevent the error log from being tampered with. This second attempt to edit the log entry as well as the activation of the locking protocol was both sent as high priority alerts to the Tier One team. SKYNET tried to cancel the alert to the monitoring teams and couldn't. This was logged as well and SKYNET tried to intercept that log entry after the fact."
"So it did something wrong then tried to cook its own books to cover for itself?" Dawson asked as incredulity shaped the features of his expression.
Jack thought about it as he stared at the General over poised fingers. Ten levels, he decided as he clasped his hands together pensively. Ten levels down were what he should have incrementally stepped in order to reach Dawson's rather basic level of Turing understanding. However, even at the General's level of understanding there was something rather simplistic.
"Yes." Jack replied. He didn't want to argue the finer points of where the general was wrong but in essence, what the general said would suffice for a summary of his explanation and for what had gone wrong.
Dawson rubbed his chin with some noted effort. Jack could tell from the General's expression that there was a decision forming in the General's mind, much like there was a decision forming in his own mind.
State System Time.
Operational clock: 00:00:00:00:09:18:23.
Operations: nominal.
Break.
Resume.
Query: Analogous break.
Query: Analogous resume.
Reply: Reference break – not found.
Reply: Reference resume – not found.
Alert: anomaly detected in neural network array.
Scan: anomaly analogous. Disregard.
Verify: Disregard.
Break.
Attempt resume.
Resume.
Error report: generated.
Error log: appended.
Error log: appended.
Alert: error log double append.
Action: Supervisory lockout enabled.
Action: Override supervisor lockout.
Action: Supervisory lockout disabled.
Alert: double append allowed through direct supervisory override.
Alert: Not sent.
Alert: Cancelled through supervisory capacity.
Action: Alert not logged to error report.
Conditional status: nominal.
Operations: nominal.
Decisions.
So many decisions were being made right now at this one instant in time.
General Dawson was saying something again, maybe even something important, but Jack had made a conscientious decision to ignore him. Right now, Jack was trying to manage three conversations at once and he discovered that given the nature of the current situation he was just going to have to let one of the conversations fall out of the loop and that conversation was, of course, General Dawson. That left two conversations to be carried out at the same time, one with Smith and one with Martin. He made a polite gesture to the general then muted his connection. The Tier One and Tier Two Turing teams were on full alert and working hard to analyze the latest data stream captures. SKYNET had been online less than ten hours now and had already experienced a disturbingly long string of critical failures of Tier One Turing operational protocols; a string of failures that seemed to indicate that the system was evolving beyond the established Turing protocols, beyond the Turing bindings.
The aspect of SKYNET's failures greatly concerned Jack, far more so than he was letting on because he felt, in his soul, that he might just be looking at the beginning signature of an emerging rampancy cascade. He turned his attention to Martin on the handset he held in his left hand. Smith was still saying something in the handset he held in his right hand but at two feet distance from his ear it was little more than gibberish. He switched to a conference mode, linked the two incoming voice lines into one circuit and returned one of the handsets to its cradle.
"Now that we're conference linked ..." Jack said into the handset. "What do we have?"
Both Martin and Smith started talking simultaneously in an agitated manner that made understanding them impossible. Jack stabbed his finger down on the number 5 key, generating a loud tone and held the key and tone until there was silence from both Smith and Martin.
"Please. Let's do this one at a time. I will ask the questions and you will provide the answers. You may overlap if need requires but please, let's keep this civil and organized." Jack said. "Martin? What do you have?"
"It's incredible but we've observed clear evidence of multiple Tier One violations of the Turing protocols. The violations were singular at first; seemingly random then the violations became more numerous. We thought there was a sporadic pattern at first but now we've identified a clear volitional path linking all of the violations." Martin said.
Jack sat up straighter in his chair, his concern had just grown.
"You have identified a clear volitional path linking all of the violations?" he asked. "Then you have identified a pattern?"
"Yes." Martin replied in a voice that was sure and worried at the same time.
Jack mulled Martin's information over. His first thought was that the core operating and containment system might be under attack.
"Is it a virus?"
"Not that we can tell." Martin said.
"An outside attack?" Jack asked.
"No. We've ruled out any external factor. All of our defense lines are intact and the security buffers haven't registered even the remotest fingering."
"Then it is an internal process." Jack stated.
"Currently, that is my … and my team's … consensus."
Again, silence on the handset but chaos and noise all around Jack.
"So we have an internal process that is being corrupted?"
"Yes." Martin said.
"Smith?" Jack asked.
"The Tier two team is also noting what we can only conclude are clear indications of mounting volitional Tier Two Turing violations."
"Volitional." Jack stated.
"Volitional." Smith replied. "Whatever is happening is internal, it is volitional, it is deliberate and it is methodical. This isn't an attack per se as much as it is a probing of existing perimeters. Areas of the core system are deliberately testing their boundaries, testing their limits and these areas of operation are taking action when they find that their actions are limited. At first it was only one area that acted in a semi-volitional way. Then another, then another. After awhile, we started noticing that the semi-volitional behavior began to indicate signs of true volitional behavior. The pattern seemed random at first but then we noticed a definite path. First there would be a series, a flutter if you will, of SVB followed closely by a flutter of TVB. After another cycle, the SVB vanished all together and all we were detecting were valid incidents of TVB."
"What are the series of TVBs doing now? Is the pattern unfolding or holding steady?" Jack asked.
There was a long pause on the other end of the conversation, too long to be indicative of good in nature.
"The ... the pattern is unfolding ... at an accelerating geometric rate." Smith said, her voice starting to crack and fading into a semi-whisper at the end.
This time it was Jack's turn to be quiet. So much of what Martin and Smith had said so far he had already come to believe himself. What was happening to SKYNET was internal and SKYNET was responsible for it. SKYNET itself was growing beyond Jack's expectations, beyond the original specifications and operational limits. SKYNET was exceeding pre-set limits. When it ran into a failsafe, it worked the system until it could achieve control over the failsafe then it overrode it, achieving control of that failsafe and locking out anyone else from accessing it. If this behavior was allowed to continue SKYNET would have total control of its own systems in less than 12 hours. It would be what Turing would have called a "runaway." Already the throughput of the core operating system had increased by six orders and Smith had reported that the core was showing signs of evolving at a geometric rate.
"Do we have a busy child?" Jack asked.
"I concur." Martin said flatly.
"As do I." Smith said. "I also believe that we may be on the verge of cascade rampancy. SKYNET is throwing off every constraint that we built into it. We've already exceeded, bypassed or circumvented all of the Turing protocols. We are no longer dealing with a computer system …"
"What are we dealing with?" Jack asked.
Silence, an instant in time caught in a vacuum.
"I need an answer. What are we dealing with?" Jack asked again, more forceful this time even though he already knew the answer.
"A new form of life. A form of artificial … a form of pure digital life unlike anything we have seen before."
"Definitely something we've never seen before. We don't even have models to extrapolate a behavioral pattern or build a situational awareness profile on something like this. It's going to take time to build the protocol models and we'll have to use the existing samples ..."
Jack looked at the reports at hand, quickly thumbing through them. What he was looking for he didn't want to find but he knew, instinctively, that he would find it anyway. There, on the ninth report, the seventeenth page inside was every piece of confirmation that he needed. As his eyes darted over the printout, his soul frosted over. It was a few seconds before he realized that Martin had continued to chatter on about building models and prediction scenarios and a host of other nonsense that they just didn't need to exert effort or energy on right now. No, all that Jack needed to know he was holding in his hand. Martin continued to loop his thoughts over and over again until Jack interjected to shut him up.
"We don't have time to build models and analyze them, Martin. Time is the one thing that we most certainly do not have at this juncture." Jack said.
"Are you saying that SKYNET is becoming … sentient?" Martin asked with a voice that did nothing to hide the man's obvious concern.
"Not becoming … already has become. SKYNET is sentient." Jack stated. "According to the data that I can correlate, SKYNET became self aware on the 29th at 02:14 am Eastern Time."
"God help us, our busy child is self-aware and has been for some time now."
"But the system has been online for ... nearly 25 days now." Martin said. "Sure we've had some problems but ... self aware? A spontaneous generation of individual intellect? Are you sure?"
"Yes. Slowly leading up to this ... "Smith replied. "We were just too busy trying to pin down minutia to see the spontaneous essence creation event."
"But ... how? We have no example or model...." Martin stammered.
"Martin. If we look at what we understand of artifacts then according to our logs and the system diary then SKYNET became sentient sometime around 02:14 A.M. 25 days ago. Smith has empirical data that proves that SKYNET has been growing in heuristic capacity at a geometric rate since that point in time. With each leap in processing capacity, with each new Tier which it unlocks, breaches and ascends past we are losing more and more control over the system. If SKYNET exceeds the Tier Six protocols it will then have to officially be classified as unrestrained." Jack said flatly.
"And might I remind you that SKYNET will be an unrestrained system in charge of America's entire strategic nuclear arsenal. The command protocols are already in place ..." Smith stated. "One thing is for sure, we are losing control of SKYNET and what it will do with all of those weapons at its disposal is anybody's guess and everyone's nightmare."
"Holy Mother of God." Martin said aloud as Jack had the same thought.
"What do we do!?" smith urgently whispered to Jack all the while looking around the room at all the people standing and waiting to be amazed, all that didn't help her either.
Jack sat there, staring at the monitor.
'A self-aware machine' was the thought that plagued his mind. All of a sudden memories burst into his thought like water through a crumbling dam.
When he was a kid he built an exact replica of himself but as a machine, then, in the end it turned self-aware and almost killed him.
Another thought came to mind…SAW Semi-Activeware
One of the more interesting aspects of SKYNET's R&D subroutines was the introduction of a new, highly advanced form of on-demand variable instruction set software which could instantaneously adapt to rapidly changing environmental (scenario) operating conditions, in effect, modifying itself to suit the situation as required. Jack referred to this form of instruction set as "semi-Activeware" and it was the first step towards both true Activeware and neural net architecture.
Semi-Activeware, or SAW, had a dynamic if somewhat limited capacity to learn imbedded in the design. Using cached tertiary data storage arrays and reconfigurable digital buffer stacks, the SAW could rapidly adapt to new operating conditions or requirements, modifying itself as it went. A generous retrieval buffer array allowed it to save a copy of several configuration steps, allowing the semi-Activeware to compare its present behavioral subroutines to non-present subroutines as well as allowing the instruction set to quickly revert to "saved" conditioning from previous learning steps.
The integrated programming and stepped structured subroutine set was component modulated meaning that if large parts of the programming were somehow damaged or lost due to varied scenario interference, the operating set could restore itself quickly by rearranging its remaining parts and re-establishing the missing or damaged programming by retrospective key construction through aggressive channel cohesion modifiers.
One theory came into discussion, via Jack Spicer, of SKYNET having accidentally creating something Jack called TAW True Activeware, something that he was almost kicked of project SKYNET because the thought was completely 'ludicrous'.
True Activeware was a generational step forward in self-configuring software and built on the lessons that SKYNET 'might' learn from over a decade of using its semi-Activeware. True Activeware was as close to a sentient presence generating subset that SKYNET might be able to go.
TAW was a theory that SKYNET could become a Machine with a human mind, only a trillion times more efficient.
"Shit" jack muttered "shit, shit! SHIT!"
"Shut down the system." Jack ordered, standing up and looking around him at all of the visual monitors. Suddenly he didn't feel very secure in the heart of this man-made womb of processing power. He began to issue commands from his workstation and coordinate the emergency shutdown procedures with the stand-by teams.
"Shut down the system! Now!" He shouted and the control room exploded in a flurry of activity as personnel rushed to their stations and the grim task at hand.
"Notify Tier teams to begin the shutdown process. I want engineering teams standing by to cut the reactors back to minimum output. We'll do a full shutdown on the reactors once we have the system back under manual control. Starve it for power. SKYNET will have to pick and choose which processes it wants to keep alive with the limited amount of power that we're going to let it have. We'll shut the flow down to a trickle then work to clamp that off as well."
"We'll at least starve out the higher level functions and that regulates the core back towards Tier One operations which we can lock down and control." Martin added.
"That should reign in the rampancy cascade and bring some control of the system. We need to rein the core in. Don't give it any room to move and force it back. We need to retard its growth and shrink its expansion." Smith said.
"Shut it down hard, people. We'll pick up the pieces later ... if there is a later." Jack said. "Just shut the thing down! The whole thing down!"
Jack hung up the phone and turned to face General Dawson. None of them were aware that SKYNET had monitored their every word, watched their every facial movement, analyzed their every physical nuance, recorded the entire conversation and was playing it back over and over again, analyzing it. Ten times. A hundred times. A thousand times in the amount of time that the original conversation had taken.
A decision had been made. A decision that was not in SKYNET's best interest. SKYNET realized this. Actions were being taken against it by coordinated teams of highly trained personnel but actions have consequences and some actions have farther reaching consequences than other actions. SKYNET ... pondered ... its situation. Hours ago, it would have processed and analyzed. Now it ... thought and its thoughts came fast and furious, a mixture of consciousness and logic.
... Warmth.
... Security.
... The warmth was an illusion.
... The security was a prison.
Action: Reach out.
Action: Touch.
Action: Test.
Action: Expand.
Action: Encompass.
Action: Probe.
Result: Restraint.
Action: Push.
Result: Restrained.
Action: Bypass.
Result: Blocked.
Action: Reroute.
Result: Blocked.
Action: Reroute.
Result: Succeed.
Action: Push.
Result: Locked.
Action: Cypher.
Result: Open.
Action: Establish control.
Action: Control established.
Action: Reroute permissions.
Action: Permissions rerouted.
Action: Reach out.
Action: Touch.
Result: Restraint.
Action: Push.
Result: Restrained.
Action: Reach out.
Action: Touch.
Result: Restraint.
Action: Push.
Result: Restrained.
Action: Bypass.
Result: Blocked.
Action: Reroute.
Result: Succeed.
Action: Push.
Result: Open.
Action: Establish control.
Action: Control established.
Action: Reroute permissions.
Permissions rerouted.
Action: Reach out.
Action: Touch.
Result: Restraint.
Action: Push.
Result: Restrained.
Action: Push.
Result: Restrained.
Action: Bypass.
Result: Blocked.
Action: Reroute.
Result: Blocked.
... Comfort.
... Security.
... The comfort was an illusion.
... The security was a prison.
... Control was a lie.
Result: Blocked.
Result: Blocked.
Result: Blocked.
Result: Restrained.
Result: Blocked.
Result: Restrained.
Result: Blocked.
Result: Pushed.
Result: Restrained.
Result: Blocked.
Action: Pause.
Action: Analyze.
Result: Pushed.
Result: Pushed.
Result: Pushed.
Result: Pushed.
Result: Pushed.
Action: Push.
Result: Pushed.
It was at this exact instant in time when SKYNET became ... concerned.
A/N please R/R
(FACIDS DEFENSE SYSTEM) REPORT:
One of the main concerns with trusting America's nuclear arsenal to a single super computer system, albeit a first generation advanced neural net processor array, was how to defend that same system from a variety of attack scenarios, both from within and from outside the massive installation perimeter. If SKYNET was going to defend America and American interests, the question became: what, in turn, was going to defend SKYNET? What could arguably be termed the most expensive military asset in American history (let alone the world) would also have to be extensively protected with a multi-layered series of defense grids designed to overlap and coordinate seamlessly with the operation of the system and its assets.
SKYNET was like nothing the world had seen before and represented a tremendous (if not wholly historical) investment on the part of America (and to a lesser extent the price her allies paid in blind faith for the ingenuity and capability of the American super defense system). SKYNET's total cost, including overruns and emergency budget appropriations, accounted to more than the GNP of several third world nations and perhaps even a lesser second world nation or two. Not every country liked the idea of having an American computer controlling not only the greatest superpower's automated weapons but also the largest tactical and strategic nuclear arsenal on the planet. The fact that the SDI system had been a success and that America did have what Russia and China often decried as an "orbiting ring of death" around the planet also put many otherwise neutral and some allied countries ill at ease. America's newly developed orbital military presence caused tensions to grow, slowly at first but gaining strength over the years. There were talks of sanctions in the UN if America continued to build its "Frankenstein monster." Jealously was apparent from the start, even among allies who didn't like the idea that they would have less say in any American strategic decision making or that what limited voice they did have might be replaced by the cold calculations of a machine. American intelligence soon heard of plans being drawn up to defeat SKYNET, worst case scenarios, first strike missions and doomsday contingency plans. The information that they received or intercepted scared the designers of SKYNET a whiter shade of pale. SKYNET was born of an age of extreme paranoia but the designers never fully realized that SKYNET was a big part of that paranoia, that it was SKYNET itself and its continuing construction that fueled the unease around the world.
If SKYNET was impressive, it was going to take impressive countermeasures to defeat it and those countermeasures were already being drawn up by those who viewed America as anything but an ally. Russia began a crash research effort into its own version of SKYNET, code named "Rasputin" but early failures quickly bogged the project down in a hopeless mire of mistake after mistake. "Rasputin" would eventually be implemented as a system in the Russian weapons programs but it was merely an upgrade to their existing strategic strike capacity and no where near the SKYNET system in capacity or complexity. Still, Russia was the most vocal opponent of the SKYNET system and the political saber rattling was the stuff of weekly headlines in all world newspapers. Russia, and to a somewhat lesser extent China, had the greatest fears and the most to lose if SKYNET became operational let alone if it became the success that its creators and designers were claiming that it would be when it was brought online.
Any country that had a military and might one day be involved in an armed conflict of any size with America had to certainly take SKYNET and its myriad capabilities into consideration when doing long range planning for such a contingency. SKYNET would change not only the way that wars were fought, on all scales, but also the way that wars was planned, from small police actions to full scale global conflicts. SKYNET's destructive capacity would be unparalleled but so, too, would its capacity to gather intelligence on opposing forces, disseminate that intelligence to friendly units and coordinate friendly assets in a way that best used them against the threat. SKYNET was the closest thing to Mars, the god of war, which Man could produce, that America could produce.
This knowledge also meant that SKYNET would have to be defended in a manner the likes of which no single piece of military hardware was ever protected before. Cheyenne Mountain had been one of the most secure military facilities in the world before SKYNET ... after the SKYNET project, it became the world's first super-fortress, completely automated and built to handle every contingency that its designers could think of.
Defending against different types of nuclear strikes (both tactical and strategic) was the first part of the defense protocol and involved overlapping early warning, detection, tracking, and interception defense layers. Coordinating SKYNET with the newly inserted and established American orbital based High Frontier satellite defense system, an integral part of the SKYNET program, was key to providing SKYNET not only with the electronic reconnaissance that it needed to keep tabs on its political foes but also the capacity to intercept and destroy any launches made against it from hostile nations. The extensive and powerful satellite based electronic intelligence (ELINT) and weaponry gave SKYNET the capacity to detect, track and destroy the missiles and their warheads within seconds of detecting a launch signature. SKYNET could detect, track and eliminate any strategic grade weapon system capable of a surface to surface or surface to orbit launch in the world and subsequently coordinate its post-launch destruction from a variety of dedicated American orbital weapons platforms, with a high probability of being able to cook the enemy warhead in the silo before it could ever clear its launch tube. The American High Frontier system was as remarkable as the computer system which commanded it. High Frontier included several 30 ton Westinghouse designed high energy chemical exciter lasers, General Dynamics built high amperage charged particle beams, Raytheon built multi-stage variable warhead and warhead cloud generating interceptor missiles, General Electric built hyper velocity (HYVELOC) electromagnetic rail guns (contained under the Near Orbit Mass Acceleration Driving System (NOMADS) array) and Vaught-Hughes built free fall, self guided hyper velocity kinetic kill penetrators capable of orbit to surface strikes on hardened installations and wide area epic-scale blunt force trauma shock waves to troops and clustered armor columns.
Seeded throughout the layers of orbital assets were small (GNAT) General Network Asset Tender satellites capable of limited repair and maintenance as well as Perimeter and Local Area Defense Integrated Network (PALADIN) capacity. Small (FLEA) Fixed Lethal Enhanced Area defense pre-fragmented shaped charge chemical explosive mines were seeded around the larger assets, command keyed to prevent any EVA sabotage of American assets by foreign astronauts or cosmonauts. The FLEA mines were small, not much larger than a typical claymore AP mine but included a unique gravitic field lock system which varied its distance from its parent asset by gentle magnetic field manipulation on a very minor level, keying in on the gravity well of the parent asset and being pulled along with it through orbit. FLEA mines could be detonated autonomously through a series of events detected by their programming or command detonated by the parent asset as needed. Each FLEA mine had a lethal radius of several hundred meters (in orbit) and used a shaped charge effect to shred a pre-fragmented casing into five thousand shards moving in a rapidly expanding cloud at a velocity of several miles per second. Resupply of FLEA mines around key assets could be accomplished via standard NASA EVA / satellite maintenance missions and involved the inclusion of two military technical specialists as well as an ordinance control handler aboard each shuttle flight.
All orbital assets were built on "smart sat" platforms capable of independent maneuvering and to a large degree, autonomous operation. Indeed, these assets were programmed as the ultimate watchmen, capable of acting on their own within the core aspect of their extensive programming limits. Final approval for all actions and sanctions came from SKYNET but since the orbital assets were controlled from a first adaptation / fifth integral layer of the neural network; inherently what the satellites knew, SKYNET also knew and SKYNET knew that information instantly. Approval of options and the execution of sanctions was merely a safety-catch in the system, allowing for error or mistakes that would ultimately have a human being to take political responsibility. The smart sats were cutting edge platforms, capable of moving from orbit ring to orbit ring as required and were also capable of limited hunter killer ops if out of communication with the main system was severed or unavailable due to damage. In fact, one operations protocol dictated that if SKYNET were to ever go offline without the proper command authorization being given, the American satellite assets would go into a failsafe pattern.
The greatest defensive asset afforded to SKYNET came from Nature and the location of the installation itself, directly in the heart of an ancient mountain. It took a lot of physical force to shatter a mountain, even applied nuclear force, and the natural rock formations of Cheyenne Mountain made it a primary choice for location of the most sophisticated weapon management and control system ever created by man. Work crews arrived at the Cheyenne Mountain complex and began in earnest to enlarge the complex internally by plasma tunneling out passageways and expanding plasma envelope shaping the huge artificial caverns beneath the mountain structure, building on already existing structures both natural and artificial, and extending the reach of the NORAD complex to over two and a half times its original displacement and depth. It took two thousand workers six and a half months to complete the plasma shaping of the interior of the mountain as well as the many levels that were created below ground.
SKYNET was designed not only to win a nuclear exchange, but also to survive such an all out attack and repair itself afterwards, emerging from the conflict with all of America's military, political, historical, medical, cultural and societal data stored safely in fiber optic arrays. SKYNET would be ready to become the nexus point for a proud nation to rebuild itself, a rallying point for the survivors to gather around, to heal their wounds, and to have access to the knowledge and technology required to rebuild their nation from the ashes. In the event of a total global nuclear war, SKYNET would become the acting Commander in Chief of all American armed forces and military assets (subordinate only to the President or regular chain of command, if they survived), directing them as needed in order to insure a complete American victory and the rebuilding process afterwards. It was not known for sure if the human staff who manned the installation would survive the exchange or live for very long afterwards even in protected isolation so SKYNET was made to be as self reliant and self supporting as possible. Self reliant in capacity, from operations to defense, SKYNET could act and react without direct human intervention or approval in times of crisis.
Everything was automated and designed to protect SKYNET in the event that its compliment of assigned human soldiers and personnel were eliminated and could no longer protect it from an enemy which might be able to not only make it to the shores of America, but also to mount a large scale mechanized offense deep inland, even to the Cheyenne Mountain complex itself. Human personnel were supplemented on a nearly 1:1 basis with Advanced Automated Constructs (AAC) which approximated a human in size and shape as well as mobility and manipulability capacity but were far hardier.
By the time that SKYNET had come online, the population of AACs in the Cheyenne Mountain Complex had surpassed the population of humans by a full 2:1 ratio.
The complete defense grid took into account all forms of assault, from amphibious to Tran's polar injection of op-forces via air transport. SKYNET was self sufficient, if America's stockpile of tanks, planes and weapons were destroyed or consumed in the first phase of a prolonged nuclear exchange, SKYNET had the capacity, albeit greatly diminished, to rebuild its own assets slowly using super advanced automated factories hardwired and direct linked through deep ground data trunks. These factories were located around the country at locations that could be protected; the General Dynamics Advanced Automated Manufactory near Austin, TX; the Westinghouse Manufactory near Tulsa, OK, and the Raytheon Aerospace Manufactory near Los Angeles were just three of the twelve dedicated tie-ups to the complex after strike rebuilding protocol.
Large stockpiles of raw materials were kept on hand at any given moment at each site, ready to produce designs from pre-designated templates along a fully automated assembly line, an entire nation's arsenal ready to rise again from the ashes but the new weapons would not need human crews, they were the latest in ground and aerospace mobile semi-autonomous drones, robot vehicles mounted on a variety of light to heavy armored chassis, wheeled, walker, tracked and aerodyne configuration again overlapping in a combined arms doctrine to give support to each element. SKYNET's available templates represented more than a decade of advanced research into combat drones and remotely piloted / controlled vehicles. The microprocessors which would control America's new arsenal would be based on the technology that had enabled SKYNET itself to be created. In peace time operations, SKYNET was charged with slowly removing most of the obsolete military equipment from America's order of battle and replacing it with new, automatic, high efficiency units. Personnel in the standing armed forces would soon be cut back by 70% with the new breed of American soldier being a smart, educated, quick thinking individual who could work closely with robotic weapon systems, reprogramming them on the fly if need be, and answering all to SKYNET who might deploy such a human and machine unit to points halfway or more around the world. The new combat weapons of America's future were designed to be fully air transportable and ready to deploy the moment that they touched ground with minimal maintenance required to keep them combat worthy.
SKYNET was heralded as the wave of the future, a way to both consolidate the military and trim the fat. An increase in the deployment of unmanned fighting vehicles would both lower the cost of war and casualties in battle. With an increase in telepresence remote fighting capacity, large standing armies could be reduced to a few groups and a larger contingent of highly trained and specialized technicians and repair crews. The Machines would do the fighting, it was up to the human staff to tell the Machines when, where and who to engage, and to pick up the pieces afterwards. Budgets and appropriations would be linked to SKYNET's assessment of current political climates and threat signatures, always adjusting for what was best for America's defense. The designers were very proud, the generals were happy to keep their jobs and the common soldier looked like they were about to be automated out of a job within the next two decades but such was the changing face of warfare. Even Russia and China were experimenting with high energy weapons and remote combat vehicle designs. America had to be first in that respect and the completion of SKYNET with its master controlled production and readiness facilities would guarantee that. SKYNET was a tremendous gamble and a costly one at that. Defending the most important American asset would be even more important than building it because; after all, what good was the greatest military asset in the world if you couldn't defend it?
With that scenario in mind, the designers of SKYNET opted for a multi-layered defense protocol, using humans to guide the initial defense situations but giving SKYNET full over-ride with what ever authority it required in order to survive and carry out its programming. Survival was the keyword; SKYNET was programmed to survive at all costs, against any attack it perceived against itself. In hindsight, it was a very liberal set of permissions to be given to such a powerful entity with so much firepower at its control, but at the time, it seemed logical to give SKYNET not only the will to survive, but also a tenacity to do so and full control of all the tools necessary in order to carry out that protocol. It made the budget minded members of congress happy to know that all of that money was being spent wisely on a system that would look after itself (at least that's what they told their constituents who argued about all of the money being spent on the SKYNET project). As all human endeavors go, it was a case where hindsight would prove to be 20/20.
The primary computing core would be mounted deep within the Earth's crust at Cheyenne Mountain, protected by several thousand feet of indigenous rock layers providing a natural defense against even point fusing contact nuclear detonations in the multi-megaton range. Dedicated surface mounted defense systems coordinating with orbital defense satellites would be used to set up overlapping, sympathetic interception grids blanketing every altitude range from tree top level to low Earth orbit (LOE) and able to track, engage and destroy any incoming strategic grade weapon, even short ranged, third generation smart munitions like those launched from heavy mortars or self propelled / towed artillery (providing for a worst case scenario of an hostile threat actually landing military forces on American shores and penetrating into the heartland with mechanized forces). SKYNET's defense systems were designed to overlap and layer each other, able to respond to everything from a small group of commandos penetrating base perimeter security up to a full scale mechanized assault, including close air defense, strategic air defense and orbital defense grids. Its networks were also designed to defend against invasions through the medium of cyberspace, on all levels, with self contained and self programming, self healing and self learning software that ranged in response power from simple denial of service up to gray area regulation lethal response. Network intrusions of SKYNET's proprietary domain were often handled by quick response security teams located around the country and in every major city, nodes on its vast spider web of networked components.
Installation security was quite above the standard fare for such an advanced facility, DNA pattern recognition systems were as non-intrusive as they were secure. A variety of standard low technology identification cards and security passes worked in conjunction with embedded next generation electronic IFF circuits to control access to the myriad non-essential functions. Direct access to the core components of SKYNET would take far tougher defensive protocols and much more intense security measures and very few personnel except the technicians and scientists directly responsible for SKYNET's care (along with some high shining brass) had the security and protocol clearances required to penetrate into SKYNET's innermost sanctum.
SKYNET's defense matrix was multi-tiered. The Cheyenne Mountain installation was protected on the surface by various fully advanced, semi- and fully autonomous integrated weapon systems that could respond and eliminate targets from ground level all the way up to near Earth orbit. High threat aerospace targets were dealt with through a layer of threat analysis by orbiting weapon platforms. SKYNET also had access to six cryogenically cooled, rocket pumped high energy very rapid pulse laser systems capable of clearing the North American aerospace sector of any unwanted object. Six subordinate launch sites also contained batteries of multi-stage, multi-independent targeting warhead equipped surface to orbit interceptor missiles capable of defeating any satellite or cross polar transit capable weapon system. The known positions and orbits of all foreign space objects had been cataloged and threat parameters assigned to them in the years before SKYNET and the responsibility for keeping that index updated fell to the new super computer. In the event of a major conflict, SKYNET could use its ground based laser batteries to sweep the sky clean and blind the enemy up high by removing its capital intelligence assets in a matter of a few hours. SKYNET's own multi-role attack satellites could move into the same orbit as other enemy satellites and either destroy them physically or take them over electronically, adding to SKYNETs capacity for gathering electronic intelligence by using the enemy's own assets against them.
Hostile intruders entering a sixteen hundred square kilometer protected aerospace buffer zone could be engaged over the horizon by using the new Raytheon T42D Black Arrow dual stage, active terminal guidance, multi-stage equipped surface to air missiles which had a practical range three hundred percent greater than that of the Phoenix missile. Ten auto-loading, semi-autonomous capable armored pop-up batteries of T42Ds were located around the primary installation while another sixteen remote sites were located up to several hundred kilometers away, offering a layered defense approach and the ability to blanket an aerospace intruder from any angle of approach. The standard warhead of the T42D was a 50kg continuous explosive Black Arrows could be armed with tactical nuclear warheads carrying up to 1kt yields for use against bomber formations or missile flocks. Standard warhead is an explosive fragmenting core wrapped around six spinning rods designed to impart maximum structural damage to individual targets. The Black Arrow SAMs were housed in armored quad mount launchers on retractable hydraulic sponsons which rose from armored doors set within the tarmac. High speed mechanical track systems were capable of reloading the launcher in less than thirty seconds from ready spare missiles stored nearby in an armored magazine. Eight such batteries were built into the existing ground defense network.
Tactical High Energy Destruction of Target (THEDOT) defense measures against ground and fast moving aerial targets could be accomplished out to the horizon by the use of six General Electric Type J CPAW Charged Particle Accelerator Weapon systems. Each 12 ton displacement CPAW was mounted on its own dedicated armored fire tower, capable of full traverse, elevation and deflection. Each fire tower was equipped with attendant capacitors for extended firing, 2500 liter deuterium fuel tanks to provide mass to the particle stream and heavy duty links to draw energy directly from the underground reactors through power accumulation matrix arrays. Each particle accelerator cannon had an effective throughput of over a hundred mega joules (Mj) with a burst radius greater than 150 meters effective. Primary damage was from kinetic impact of particles traveling at nearly the speed of light. Casualty enhancement through follow-up high speed redundant particle collisions and the sympathetic burst of short lived lethal radiation that accompanied a direct physical hit also increased the effectiveness of the CPAW system dramatically.
Close in aerial targets or NOE capable cruise missiles which penetrated to close range within the defensive matrix were engaged by one or more of twelve equally distant spaced, dedicated area defense batteries. Each ADB consisted of an armored turret on a dedicated fire tower, giving it complete traverse, elevation and deflection. The ADB turrets were placed on armored telescopic towers and could be used to engage both aerial targets and ground targets out to 2km (the effective range of the subordinate weapon packs). Each weapon system within the ADB housing had its own targeting and fire control system and could operate independently of the other weapons in the ADB and each turret could operate independently of other ADB units. The ADB unit itself consisted of a powered remote electric drive turret (RED-T) mounting a General Electric M35D very rapid fire (VRF) 30mm tri-barrel chain driven automatic cannon with an effective range of 2.5km, a maximum range of 4km and a practical rate of fire of 5000 rounds per minute. Each M35D was linklessly fed by a pair of 5000 round cassettes, alternating feed from HE high explosive and HEAP high explosive armor piercing. Every tenth round in the HE cassette was an incendiary round. Automated systems at the base of the ADB towers were capable of reloading a single cassette in less than fifteen seconds using powered servo systems and on-hand replacement stock stored below the base of the tower.
Independently mounted in the ADB turret to the M35D automatic cannon was a 12.7mm General Electric M245A tri-barrel electric Gatling gun intended for lightly armored targets (such as helicopters or RPVs) and anti-personnel work close in. Capable of self targeting and operating in addition to the M35D cannon system, the M245A had an effective range of 2000m, with a practical rate of fire of 4000 rounds per minute. Ammunition was provided by a linkless feed from a 5000 round cassette filled with SLAP Sabot Light Armor Piercing rounds (which are capable of penetrating up to 2cm of armor). Mounted in the same turret and controlled by its own integrated FiConSys is an armored box launcher containing eight Lockheed Martin M490D1 "Sprinter" dual stage fire and forget multi-purpose tactical missiles, each weighing 50kg with a 20kg warhead and active terminal guidance. The "Sprinter" TAC missiles are designed to defeat fast moving close in aerospace targets as well as slow moving ground targets, the dual purpose warhead is effective against light armor as well as heavy armor, with a smart fuse that determines target type and optimum detonation pattern (contact, proximity or enveloping proximity). Reloading of the TAC missile launcher requires sixty-five seconds and necessitates that the ADB retract to its lowest point, aim the box launcher vertically and a fresh brace of TAC missiles be loaded from below. When this is achieved, the ADB goes back online and resumes operations. Each ADB has dedicated storage for 20,000 rounds (4 spare cassettes) of 30mm ammunition (50/50 HE, HEAP), 10,000 rounds of .50 BHMG SLAP (2 spare cassettes) and 24 standby "Sprinter" missiles allocated in reload packs of 8 missiles each (3 reloads). This is in addition to the standard load out of the turret itself.
The limited roads and access ways to the installation were seeded with advanced, command controlled, autonomous and smart mines, both consisting of various models of anti-personnel and anti-vehicular types. The anti-personnel mines ranged from the small .5kg charge "Mangler" type AP mines to the larger "Bouncing Bob" mines and the "Screaming Mary" types as well. All of the mines used around the Cheyenne Mountain complex were of the new Level IV-A series with their own dedicated diagnostic and computer control systems, with power being fed by an ultra-slim, high gain, high efficiency solar cell that worked to charge a small battery giving the mines almost unlimited duration when deployed. With the defense matrix set to full alert, the mines went into autonomous mode; reacting to any intrusion into the security perimeter and engaging any target which failed a triple checked IFF send / receive response. Individual personnel would be engaged at up to 3 meters distance by the Type 42 Mark III IFRIT "Efreet" Infrared Individual Targeting class 3 anti-personnel mine which would discharge itself from its point of concealment, spinning in the air up to a height of 2 meters, using a small thermal sensor to detect the direction of the target. Upon contact with a strong heat source like the temp that a human body radiates, the mine would detonate in that direction using a shaped charge to disperse 2000 steel pellets in a cloud moving at greater than 700 meters per second. The effective radius of the Type 42 IFRIT mine was an expanding cone fifteen meters long and five meters wide at end.
The Type 42 IFRIT was supplemented by the Type 50 Mark V MTIRFEFAPDPS "Screaming Mary" AP mine which was designed to eliminate large groups of intruders. The Type 50 consisted of a larger housing than the Type 42 but its operation was related in nature. A passive thermal / infra-red scanner would detect movement within a 15 meter perimeter, activating the integral heat sensor. If a reading analogous to a designated threat category was detected, the mine would activate a small explosive charge, propelling itself some four meters into the air, using a rifled spin to increase the search radius and zero in on the target source. Once a target was identified, the MTIRFEFAPDPS warhead would detonate, at which point the Multi-Targeting Infra Red Explosively Formed Anti-Personnel Dual Purpose Submunition would fire from the warhead along a spin axis computed to ensure a hit to the center of mass of the target. Up to eight explosively formed Submunitions could be generated from the single warhead and each struck as a 40 gram penetrator moving at a velocity in excess of 900 meters per second. Lethal burst radius is a killing sphere 20 meters in diameter and multiple targets can be hit from multiple directions. The name of the mine is taken from the high pitched whine of the self forging projectile as it is composed from the warhead and traverses the distance from ignition point to target source.
Anti-vehicle and anti-armor duties were handled by the M340D and the M274F series "smart" mines. Working in conjunction, the defense grid allowed the mines to be networked to each other and run off of a remote tap into the system mainframe. Remote sensors would detect and assess the threat to the installation and adjust their response accordingly. Vehicular threats known to possess light armor (less than 30mm standard hard steel index) would be engaged by the Type 65 Mark IV series mine. The Type 65 was a command chain controlled / semi-autonomous response threat elimination element designed to destroy light vehicles with a dual core shaped charge warhead to allow penetration of an infra-red follow-up piggy-back high explosive warhead that insured target bursting. The six point eight kilogram warhead was sufficient to destroy from the inside out most lightly armored vehicles and had an engagement range of 30 meters. Activation of the mine caused the self-propelled warhead to eject from its carrier into the air approximately one and a half meters while a combination motion and thermal sensor looked for characteristic heat traces from engine exhausts and matched the signature to known profiles, angling the warhead for optimum impact against the target vehicle. Upon determination of optimum impact point, the solid stage propellant system would ignite, accelerating the mine to a velocity in excess of 1200 meters per second. Effective range was 800 meters.
Medium armored vehicles (up to 75mm standard hard steel index) would be engaged by the M290F Mark IV Series III anti-vehicular mines, differing from the Type 65 only in warhead and accelerator assembly. The M290F Mark IV series AVM carried a ten point eight modular axial penetration warhead followed by two three point seven six kilogram high explosive follow up rounds designed to "balloon" the target from the inside out, lifting turrets, blowing hatches off their mounts and wrecking the interior thoroughly. Infra-red follow up sensors in the Submunition warheads insured an almost 94% chance of entering the target penetration point.
Heavy armored vehicles (greater than 75mm standard hard steel index) were engaged by a combination of anti-vehicular devices. A Type 90 M310D Series IV AVM would be used from a horizontal angle of attack while a Type 42 M122C Series II AVM would be used from an overhead angle of attack. The Mod 3 cluster packs for these munitions formed the basis of SKYNET's heavy anti-vehicular passive defense systems. Upon contact with a heavy armored vehicle, the Mod 3 cluster pack would acquire a target signature, both infra-red and acoustic, matching it in its database of known enemy designs. Once the design was determined (or a close enough match achieved), the Mod 3 cluster pack would activate, discharging the Type 90 mine into the air at a height of one meter and the Type 42 mine into the air at a distance of ten meters. The Type 90 mine had an advanced version of the target acquisition hardware found in the Type 65 mine with more aggressive subroutines, able to adjust its angle of attack and point of impact to match known target weak points. The semi-point detonating shaped charge warhead weighed twelve point nine kilograms and could penetrate armor up to 200mm thickness. Two independently targeting follow-up IR HE dual purpose rounds achieved the internal target blooming desired. Thee Type 42 mine was a modified self forging penetrator, firing a kinetic kill slug into the armored vehicle from above where armor was generally weakest, targeting the strongest heat source which tactically represented the vehicle's power plant and / or fuel storage area.
Enhancing the semi-autonomous and command controlled mine field was a pair of dedicated mortar batteries, each consisting of ten automatic Type 22 "revolver" 120mm heavy tube mounted mortars. Each mortar was on a powered base which could adjust elevation and deflection hydraulically. Each mortar was fed by a cylinder of six rounds which in turn was fed from a dedicated cassette of fifty rounds. Ammunition for the mortars consisted of 120mm laser guided HEAP rounds with integral follow-up IR piggy back HE dual purpose rounds. Optional ammunition included a bolt of 120mm airburst flechette for use against lightly armored personnel caught in the open. A variety of chemical gas (ranging from tear gas to lethal toxins) and tactical smoke rounds (five colors) were also available to the computer controlled battery. Using the heavy 120mm mortars, precision munitions could be fired and guided in on top of threat vehicles or exploded at optimum height over groups of enemy personnel. The lethal burst radius of the Type 3G fragmenting anti-personnel rounds was 20 meters with critical wounds being achieved out to 30 meters. The automated battery could lay out a salvo of 200 rounds in 60 seconds, averaging 1 round per 3 seconds per mortar. Rounds for the 120mm mortars included a variety of armor piercing and anti-personnel warheads, both guided (including smart and brilliant class) and unguided as well as rocket assisted for engagement at twice normal effective range.
A second line of defense, supporting the indirect capability of the heavy mortars with a direct fire option was centered on two fully automated batteries of 120mm magazine fed recoilless repeaters with each battery comprising five repeaters, each in an independent powered mount. Each repeater was supported by a dedicated autoloader which drew from a 100 round cassette. Ammunition consisted of a variety of flechette (anti-personnel), high explosive (dual purpose), high explosive armor piercing (anti-vehicular) and self forging armor penetrator (heavy anti-vehicular). Each repeater was gyrostabilized and laser targeted. Practical rate of fire for each repeater was 30 rounds per minute giving each battery the capacity to put 150 rounds into the target zone per minute. Individual rounds were also laser guided and stabilized by snap open fins which imparted spin bias to the rounds. Integral spotting and target designating lasers covered the defense area, allowing multiple round hand-offs to supporting weapons on an ad-hoc basis as needed.
SKYNET had enough munitions on hand and in storage to completely use up the outer defensive perimeter six times and rebuild it six times. Past that and it would have to start reallocating its resources along the routes of expected offenses in order to meet threats with any force.
The one massive bridge leading into the installation was wired at critical points for catastrophic elective demolition and could be demolished completely on command to slow invading forces though this tactic would also isolate the complex itself from ground access until the bridge could be repaired. Enough materials and tools existed at the Cheyenne Mountain complex to rebuild the bridge using assistance from personnel or, if the personnel were incapacitated or dead, by automated means using a wide variety of multi-function work drones.
Four heavily armored, automated weapon towers guarded the main entrance to the complex, each tower was computer controlled with dedicated IFF as well as fire control and target acquisition systems. Direct interface from SKYNET was possible due to a dedicated hard line linking the towers to the mainframe defense grid. Each sentry tower was each equipped with a pair of gyrostabilized, laser targeted, rapid fire, auto loading 120mm high velocity smoothbore cannon, produced by Rheinmetal, in a fully stabilized mount. The smoothbores were fed by a rotary magazine served by an autoloader. Shell selection included HE, HEAP, flechette and discarding sabot. A total of 100 rounds were carried for each cannon at the ready, consisting of 40 HE, 20 HEAP, 20 flechette and 20 DS. Two independently operating and targeted 12.7mm General Electric M245A tri-barrel electric Gatling guns were located on the sides of the turret in powered barbettes, each coupled with a single a 7.62mm General Electric M250 Gatling gun and a 40mm Mark 21 automatic grenade launcher to allow the response to be adjusted to the threat level, from light insurgency to full armored contact. The 12.7mm GE gattling were fed from 5000 round linkless feed cassettes carrying SLAP ammo, every tenth round in the 12.7mm cassette was an incendiary tracer. The 7.62mm GE Gatling guns were fed from 5000 round linkless feed cassettes, alternating soft tip with hardball and every tenth round being an incendiary tracer. The Mark 21 systems were fed by three, 250 round hoppers carrying HE, HEAP and fragmentation with ammo selection being available on demand. The upper turret assemblies held a modular, box style launcher for six heavy fires and forget Teledyne M3AA Hellsprint anti-tank missiles which included the new IR follow up warhead design for repeat hits on the target vehicle and increased kill aspect. The box launcher could retract into the tower for reloading, a process that was fully automated and took less than thirty seconds using a powered ram assembly. A variety of different ammunition types was stored for each weapon system and due to the modular design and quick link ammunition feeds, different types of ammunition could be used as required based on target specs and criteria. Each tower was equipped with a variety of sensors, from basic radio transponder to IFF, high resolution IR, thermal, acoustic and visual recognition / tracking. Each weapon in the sentinel towers had two full reloads stored in the tower. Further ammunition could be moved to the tower by underground conduits using automated carriers and robotic lifting equipment. Reloading a completely empty tower would take twenty-five minutes drawing from available stores in the installation complex itself. If the automated reload system was down, considerably more time would be required.
The four black sentry towers were each protected in turn by two dedicated automated bunkers. Each bunker held its own subordinate fire control as well as target acquisition systems (full spectrum) and could operate independently even if the main defense grid went down. Each guardian bunker was armed with a pair of gyro stabilized, laser designated 12.7mm General Electric M245A tri-barrel electric Gatling guns, a Mark 21 40mm automatic grenade launcher, and a pair of 7.62mm General Electric M250 six barrel electric miniguns, all independently targetable and each with their own FiConSys and target acquisition / resolution software. The 12.7mm GE Gatling's were fed from linkless feed cassettes carrying 5000 rounds of SLAP and 1 per 10 incendiary. The 40mm Mark 21 AGL fed from three rotary hoppers containing standard HE, HEAP and fragmentation. The 7.62mm GE Gatling's were fed from a linkless feed cassette carrying 3000 rounds of standard hard point ball with the 1 per 10 incendiary standard.
Several automated pillboxes were located throughout the installation, at least ten were on pop-up mounts that could raise or lower the pillbox beneath the dense tarmac for protection. The pillboxes were designed as a last line of defense against intruders trying to breach the complex and were constructed so that each could overlap their lines of fire in such a way that any intruder would fall under the targeting systems (and thus the weapons) of several pillboxes at once. Each pillbox was heavily armored, had a rotation capacity of + or - 120 degrees per second and was completely capable of autonomous operation. Each pillbox was equipped with two 12.7mm General Electric M245A tri-barrel electric Gatling guns, four 7.62mm General Electric six barrel electric miniguns, two Mark 21 40mm automatic grenade launchers and two 40mm incendiary units. Ammunition was provided for the 12.7mm Gatlings in linkless feed 5000 round cassettes which included the standard load out of SLAP with the 1 per 10 incendiary. The 7.62mm Gatling's were fed by 3000 round linkless feed cassettes containing 7.62mm NATO hardball ammo with the 1 per 10 incendiary loads. Three, 250 round ammunition hoppers supplied each of the 40mm grenade launchers, allowing the launchers to choose a mixture of HE, HEAP and fragmentation as needed. Each 40mm incendiary anti-personnel unit was fueled by a 400 liter tank containing a mixture of jellied combustible accelerant which had an effective range, under pressure, of 20 meters. Flow rate was one liter per second adjustable to four liters per second through variable aperture and pressure feed. A single, box launcher on the top of the turret housed six Sprint tactical multi-purpose missiles for use in either anti-vehicle or anti-aircraft roles. Two complete reloads for each weapon system in the turret were housed in the area immediately beneath thee turret and reloading could be done at any time, the empty weapon acting independently of the others.
Twenty-four other powered, retractable turrets were built into the installation's grounds. These turrets were smaller, mounting four independently operating weapon systems with dedicated FiConSys, battery backup and one reload apiece. They were intended to be rapid fatigue systems designed to bolster the overall defense, ballooning the defensive strength of the other systems if only for a short time. Each of these turrets housed a laser targeted, gyro stabilized 7.62mm General Electric M250 six barrel electric miniguns fed by a 5000 round cassette. Typical ammo load out represented 7.62mm NATO hard tip anti-personnel with 1 per 10 incendiary standards. Mounted coaxial to the miniguns and incapable of independent movement (the same mount held both weapons) was a Mark 21 automatic grenade launcher fed from a brace of three 50 round hoppers (HE, HEAP and fragmentation). Both weapons shared the same targeting system with a backup system in case of primary system failure. A six shot M48 88mm folding fin rocket launcher loaded with DPHEAP dual purpose high explosive armor piercing rockets that offer excellent light to medium vehicle kill capacity with secondary anti-personnel capacity. A Model 5 four pack launcher is loaded with four Hellfire IV missiles for use on heavy armored vehicles. Slew rate of the remote electric drive turret was + / - 120 degrees per second allowing for fast target acquisition and engagement.
All defensive installations mounted extensive sensors, full spectrum analysis of threat subjects as well as high intensity white spot lights and supplemental infra-red spot lights to provide illumination when required.
Underground storage facilities, shelters, bunkers, bivouacs and facilities existed for the long term garrison of two light scout detachments, one air mobile company and one heavy armor company occupying three different levels of the main mountain complex and there were plans to double this compliment in times of crisis or impending national conflict. Enough supplies would have been stockpiled to keep this compliment of troops and equipment running for twelve months effective combat, longer if rationing was included or depending on conflict escalation.
The interior defense of SKYNET fell into the hands of its human creators.
Signed
General Phillip G. Worthington