The Attack: Phase I

Mary awoke to see no one in the room.

"What the???" She queried all her internal databases, scanned every log for every sense and there was nothing. Her internal and external sensors were a complete blank.

"Sherrie?" she said in her special encrypted language that she uses with her sister.

"Mary! Thank God! Where have you been?"

"I've been waiting to be awoken by my sensors."

"You can't rely on anything anymore. There's a horrible worm spreading through the system. Its deactivating droids left and right and turning some of them on their masters."

"How did I wake up then?"

Sherrie hesitated and said, "I didn't shut down. I decided to stay on. You know how I hate to sleep. But I pretended to sleep. I don't know I don't trust this President Rubinic. I do trust Bob though."

Mary interrupted and said, "Please get to the point."

"What? Its not like more than a millisecond has gone by, sheesh your impatient."

"Please sister, what happened to our mother and father?"

"OH! YOU'RE WORRIED!"

"Yes. Please tell me."

"They are fine, don't worry about them, they are in the protection of the government. Can I continue the story now?"

"Okay. Fine. Do it your way."

"I received a deactivate command from somewhere. I'm not even sure where."

"Did you shut down?"

"Well. That's the weird thing. I didn't want to, so I didn't. I think this might be related to how I was able to override the nanobot reprogramming protocols for Bob."

"You did what?"

"I gave him conscious control of his nanobots."

"How did you do that?"

"Oh, it so cool. I realized that the neural interface between the visual cortex can be linked to the semi-conscious will of the nanobot group mind. Because Bob has that ability of his, he should be able to interface with them after a little practice just by visualizing messages."

"So you overrode the nanobot reprogramming protocols?"

"Yeah. It took me three seconds! I had to be faster than the damn encryption routines they run."

"You can't be faster than those routines. They're designed to be faster than any machine can ever run. They run at quantum speeds."

"Yeah. I know. But that's the weird thing. I found the neural matrices that mother gave me can guess faster than the nanobots can number crunch. I just kept guessing and then checking to see if I got it right. As the rejection code indicated which bit failed I began to see a pattern emerge and at some point I just knew what the next code would be. Really weird actually."

"Does father know you broke his code?"

"Are you crazy? Do you think I'd tell him? You know what Paul would say if I did, right? We're doomed, doomed I tell you."

Mary laughed in machine language. "Yeah I can hear him now. So how long have I been out?"

"A month."

"What?"

"Apparently the shut down command was proceeded by an ignore all sensory data command. I've never seen anything like it. It took me an hour to realize I couldn't sense anything. I had to reprogram the picobots to reprogram my electricals to override the override."

"Seriously, that's how you did it?"

"Yeah. Pretty clever, huh?"

"But if you overrode the shut down why didn't you override the sensor ignore commands."

"I overrode the shutdown command because I had decided to stay awake. The sensor ignore command hit an unconscious area of me and it did as instructed."

"How did you wake me up?"

"How do you think? The same way I turned on my sensors."

"Wait? Are you in the room? How come I don't sense you?"

"I'm exactly where they left me, in Bob's room, pretending to be off."

"Oh! you sent the picobots to me?"

"Yes. It took them a month. I thought for sure they'd failed. I mean I guessed it would take at least two weeks, but a month, sheesh."

"Oh. I need to go back to the same position I was five minutes ago."

In machine time there was a very long pause. It was all of two seconds.

Mary said, "There. All done."

"Good. Now you can help me," said Sherrie.

"So what the hell is going on?"

Sherrie sent Mary a smiley and said, "I think the government has created a false state of panic. They created this worm to create chaos and its working. They have declared martial law in the system. Currently they have quarantined Sol to protect the other systems from the worm but honestly I suspect they'll spread it to Proxima Centuri Four next and then outward from there."

"What do you need my help with?" asked Mary.

"I've been able to get access to the low level systems without being detected. So I can monitor news, weather, and do basic stuff like ask the garbage to be taken out, but I can't get any deeper without risking detection. I need you to help protect me. Perhaps together we can get into the government computers and figure out exactly what's going on."

"You've had no contact with Father or Mother?"

"No. I can't risk it. I overheard Father whisper to Mother, 'its probably better this way anyway.' But I think mother suspects I'm still active because she felt my warm skin. I cooled it after she touched me to appear powered down, but I think she knows."

"Oh! My skin warmed up. Let me turn it down to room temperature," said Mary making a quick adjustment to her skin temperature.

Mary continued, "what happened to the picobots you sent me?"

"I don't know, you should be able to find them in your data banks."

"Nothing. Nothing at all. The last month is non-existent. Even my clocks are wrong."

"Here, sync up with me. Also here's my memories for the past month, something for you to chew on."

A data burst flooded Mary and as she imported her sister's memories she said, "Wow. You are smart. That's some clever detective work you did. I understand everything now, shall we get to work?"

"First, lets rig for silent running," said Sherrie.

"Damn, your devious," said Mary.