Immersion 3.14

Imm 3.13             Imm 3.15

The stairs leading down were austere, the walls and floor were all an off shade of white reminiscent of a hospital. Little speakers built into the wall would appear every twenty feet, but they remained silent during our decent. After what felt like an hour of walking down stairs (but was in actuality only 20 minutes or so) Kira and I came across another vault door. This door had four large spin dials in the center, spread out in a classic diamond layout. She rotated between them, seemingly at random, and entered a variety of numbers. Eventually a deep ‘click’ sound can be heard from the door as it swings inward. Inaide I see a variety of very large powerful computers, each manned with a person in front of it. A cable runs from the computers, to the back of the individual’s heads. It’s clearly seen that they’re being directly connected to the computer.

I stand there with my mouth agape. It was them. A portion of our schooling was figuring out who made the games we played, and how. The answer is surprisingly simple in hindsight, but it was much more difficult then to imagine that these individuals, whom we had colloquially dubbed the architects, were humans who had directly connected their minds to a computer. They gave up many of the subconscious tasks our brain controls over to more crude medical equipment, which freed up more processing power to push the bounds of programming. Kira struggles to close the vault door behind me, and this snaps me out of my trance. Unfortunately Kira had at that point already forced it closed, while she panted, out of breathe.

I hear that this latest generation of architects will truly be something to behold, providing they survived of course. It wasn’t readily apparent but I see one computer that is unmanned, it’s life support equipment and cable unused. Kira sees me notice and smiles sadly. “At least we found out about Vexler’s plans before he finished them, he had planned to infect all of the 15 great AI’s. Instead we forced him to start early, when he had control of only eight.” She pauses for a second as if trying to pick her words carefully. “We’ve been in contact with North America and Africa, their AI’s remain uncomprimised, however they refuse to send aid, their intelligence corps are instead focusing on creating new protocols to prevent such a disaster from happening again.” My mood had soared when she had said that America and Africa were safe, however it fell just as fast upon realizing that we were alone.

We head past the computers to a new room, one lined with koffins, with a table and water dispenser in the center. “We’re not as alone as we could be at least.” The future guard are here, and they’ll be invaluable assets for our plan. You see.. we have a way to destroy AI remotely, but it’ll require us to log in to the Koffins and leave ourselves open to the AI’s influence. Here’s what we’re going to do.. .”

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