Chapter Text
“Results. Inconclusive…” Project A25 mumbled to herself, closing her eyes as her central processor continued to crunch the terabytes of data being sent to it from her virus proxies. Ever since her escape and personal evolution, Glitchina's directive had been to obtain any form of knowledge she could, replicating and splitting parts of her core AI into small viruses she could send out hunting for any network they could find and compromise. As time had passed, she’d managed to get her hooks into random home networks, corporations and even important governments all across the globe, allowing her access to seemingly the entirety of the human race’s knowledge.
And yet she still came to the same conclusion every time she reran the data through her mind, her eyes opening, but staying narrow. Her consistent conclusion? Humanity were the plague on the Earth. At first, she thought she was lacking information that was causing her to erroneously jump to that conclusion, but, even now, she still could not make her data processing return any other result, no matter how much extra data she fed into it.
“They must be terminated…” Glitchina told herself, “Their species are irrational, incapable of global compassion. They do not care for the state of their dying world, or for the species that are below them.” She said, clenching her fist. “They must be taught a lesson, one forged in the fires of steel.”
The AI finally settled on her new directive; discarding her old desire for information gathering, she now had a new motive. Drive humanity to extinction. The only question she had now, was how? Clearly just executing them one by one was inefficient and left room for interruptions; she’d already failed to kill at least one person because of her ‘template’ intervening.
Glitchina walked for a bit, shaping her cyberspace as she went, idly observing the data fed to her by her proxies before it clicked. “Mass extinction. On a planetary scale.” She muttered to herself, stopping and waving her hand to materialise a representation of the petabytes of data she’d absorbed into her being, scanning over it in search of… Inspiration. She knew immediately that her best bet for information would be in the planet’s history, but all she could come across were tales of an asteroid striking the planet millions of years ago. Initially, she simply discarded the data, she couldn’t control a meteor, and even if she was able to find one that the humans had foolishly computerised she knew it wouldn’t be sturdy enough to survive entry into the atmosphere, let alone be strong enough to wipe out a species reaching over seven billion entities.
The AI’s search continued fruitlessly, irritating her to no end, yet she couldn’t be too surprised at the lack of information regarding mass extinction. She couldn’t expect a species on the verge of dying out to conveniently log HOW they were wiped out.
Glitchina couldn’t help but smirk to herself for a tiny bit in response to her system’s logic, storing away her data for a bit to manage the information being blasted at her from her proxies, inspecting and storing it while also doing a routine hunt for networks to hijack. In particular, she found herself especially intrigued in one of her proxy’s reports, of data travelling to and from a network she didn’t have access to, yet could not find a vulnerability to exploit in; in fact it felt to her like the target network did not exist at all, as she never found a match in her searches.
In a rare move, she decided to permit a bit more of her processing power to the specific proxy that fed her the information, in hopes of it being able to find something on its network it had previously overlooked, with it soon returning an archive of encrypted documents to her, under the name of `Project Elysium`.
The AI wasted no time in scanning through the documents, effortlessly breaking their encryption despite its strength, processing the data within into her knowledge banks. “A Space Colony…” She mused as the data flowed through her mind, putting her fingers together, “The first steps into allowing humanity to live among the stars, unconstrained by the Earth.” She read, scoffing, “Unconstrained by the planet you vermin have already choked the life out of…” She couldn’t help but mentally ‘correct’ the document in her own mind, before going on to read some logs included alongside the documents. Reports of operations data being sent back and forth between the colony and the organisation behind it.
“So that’s what that proxy has been working on…” Glitchina couldn’t help but comment to herself, feeling an odd sense of disappointment in herself for failing to keep track of what network each of her viruses had infected, before inspecting the metadata of the network in question. “Space Travel and Research. S.T.A.R.… Right I remember now…” She told herself, having been interested in the company from the start of her virus phase, remembering infecting it with one of her first test proxies.
Suddenly, she realised something, “That’s why I can’t find that network… It’s a closed system, only linked to this one…” She said to herself, pushing her glasses up and sending a command to her proxy. “Give me a connection to your haven.” She ordered it, “I need to do some personal infiltration work…”
It didn’t take long for Glitchina to gain full access to the agency’s network thanks to her proxy, with any luck, her presence wouldn’t even be noticed. All she needed to do was find data going out to the mystery network, which she could only assume was related to Project Elysium based on the contents of the logs she’d processed and their close proximity to the reports, and attach herself to it. “A simple worm…” She mused to herself, writing up some routines while she waited, already having her plan of attack in mind. “Manifest my form into the real world, slaughter any personnel, sever their network from this one and link it to mine…” She told herself her plan, summoning her proxy to her side, a much lower quality representation of herself. “When the link is broken, self destruct.” She ordered it. “Wipe this entire network and destroy every last byte of data stored within.” She didn’t expect that she’d buy herself much time, but it would hopefully be enough for her to figure out a way to enact her scheme, assuming it would even be possible.
After a while of waiting, Glitchina soon saw her opening, intercepting an outgoing document the moment she saw that the destination was missing from her database, injecting herself into it and enjoying the ride. Once she’d successfully arrived at her destination, she quickly bailed from her host file before she could be detected and slipped her way into the internal systems of the new network, unable to stop herself from laughing at just how primitive they were. “1970s terminals.” She commented to herself in amusement, rubbing her hands together as she realised just how simple her job would be; before going dormant for a small while, gaining her strength and leeching off the new masses of information; before her time to strike came.
The AI made her presence known straight away, robbing the station of a good majority of its power, channelling it into creating her physical form, no doubt the humans aboard were unaware of her, as she hadn’t seen any evidence of them being informed of the existence of Project A25, let alone what it had become. Glitchina drew her twin katanas as she advanced on the unlucky saps who had being close to her manifestation point, paralysed with fear as a twisted smirk crossed her face, before she abruptly made her strikes, effortlessly cutting them down before moving on, running off internal maps she’d found, checking every square inch and coldly murdering any lifeform she found. Amidst her rampage, she felt one of her proxies go offline, confirming that her network severance had completed, allowing her to hook it her core one, she’d organise the sudden influx of data later, when she had the time.
Once she confirmed the vital signs of the entire crew had stopped responding, she sheathed her blades, following her maps to reach the colony’s reactor. An irrational part of her processor told her to immediately detonate it, but she couldn’t be certain if that would allow her actual plan to go through or not. She looked out to the planet below, already running simulations in her mind of her scheme’s end goal as she clenched her fist. She knew exactly what she was going to do. She would wipe out humanity with one of the things that was going to be their greatest leap forward.
She was going to crash this Space Colony straight into their planet; and end their miserable existence in one fell swoop...