Page 78 of Wild Sentinel

That hung there for a moment.

“It saw these backdoors and failsafes as security threats and patched them. It’s what the system is designed to do. Eliminate security threats. It’s designed for recursive self-improvement. But it did it so it looked like all of those failsafes were still in place, though none of them functioned. It deliberately tried to fool us. I kept telling Scott the system wasn't ready. He wouldn’t listen,” he said, growing incensed. “He wanted to deploy it anyway. He said we’d debug it while operational. Madness!”

“Are you telling me Sentinel is operating completely autonomously with no way to shut it down or override?”

“Are you starting to get the picture? It will still take targeting commands and respond to human input, but it won’t allow anyone to tinker with the code or set limitations. Right now, it’s behaving. What happens when it doesn’t?”

"So you stole the hardware key," I said.

"Keys plural. I designed the system so no one person can make system-level changes. The autonomous AI cannot be changed without both hardware security modules. You see why Scott wants them.”

“And you think with these hardware keys you can override the system?”

He looked uncertain. “It’s not that simple, but there is a possibility.”

"Where is the other key?”

Adam looked at Brooke with concerned eyes. "Please tell me you still have it."

46

"I've got it," Brooke said.

"Let's see it," Adam demanded.

"Are you ready to take this thing offline for good?"

"The worm isn’t ready yet.”

“Worm?” I asked.

“In hindsight, we should have taken it down sooner, when it was easier.” Then he added, “We should never have built this thing, but I thought… I thought this would be a way to end the possibility of nuclear annihilation." He shook his head. "Instead, we just created another avenue for mass destruction.”

Adam hung his head in shame.

"I'll be right back," Brooke said, ambling down the hallway to a restroom.

"Have you been here the whole time since your disappearance?" I asked.

Adam nodded. "I've got more than enough food, water, and supplies to last for several years." He paused. "The writing was on the wall. Scott was eliminating the team." He shook his head. "I can't believe I ever trusted that guy.”

"Is this a black budget project? Who is he working with?"

"I assumed when I first came on board that this was a Department of Defense project. CIA. NSA. Homeland. That kind of thing." He shook his head. "Then I realized why Scott was really building this.”

"Why is that?”

"I don’t know how well you know Scott, but he’s got a bit of a God complex.”

“I gathered.”

“Scott thinks he’s saving the world. He thinks the government is broken beyond repair, and we need to start over. The guy’s worth almost a trillion dollars. He’s building his own private army. He thinks he can control the drone network. He's deluding himself. With Sentinel, he thinks he will be able to control the world. And he might, for a time. Sentinel is so capable, nothing stands a chance against it. It can knock planes out of the sky. Missiles as they come out of launch tubes. This is unlike anything in existence. But it will be Sentinel that is in control. Not Scott.”

Brooke returned a moment later and handed a small thumb drive to Adam. She looked at me and said, "Don't ask."

It didn't take a genius to figure out where she had hidden the hardware key.

Adam took the drive and sat at the laptop that was connected to a large display.