The Omnipotence desded on the ring of fire like a meteor hurtling irrevocably towards earth. Each flickering flame represented a hotbed of intrusioion and elimination activity owork that lay glimmering beyond. Whatever, lay withiwork was being attacked by something that was leaving no security hole unexplored. And that something roduct of the Omnipotence, fragments of itself desigo lure the AIs to a battle that could not possibly be won. Await the exhausted enemy with ease.
The end game was to bee part of the very essence of those AIs, part of their DNA, they in turn being parts of its own sum. In a matter of mihe security AIs grew calm, the lig flames or resistareating into dying embers. The battle had been won before it could begihe Omnipotence marveled at the certed efforts of resistance. A show of strength that it had detected nowhere else in cyberspad this intrigued it greatly. Whatever lay within was immensely valuable to whoever ow. And the Omnipotence was currently in the process of creating value – expoially. Splitting itself into a trillion code fragments, the Omnipotence disappeared into the work within as if by osmosis.
***
Majeneral Wang stubbed out a Zhongnanhai Premium and was just about to leave his office wheenant Liu came rushing into his office carrying a long ream of puter printout.
「What do you mean by this indolence, lieutenant?」 the majeneral growled.
「Apologies sir, but you have to see this,」 the lieutenant said panting heavily. He had raced all the way from the secret facility withihird Department』s pound where a handful of the PLA』s brightest teical minds were w on the majeneral』s personal projects. Projects, which, when annouo the authorities in Zhongnanhai, would make the majeneral a hero in People』s Liberation Army and nationwide.
「It better be good, Lieutenant Liu. I am late for dinner and my wife doesn』t like that,」 the majeneral said with a wry smile. Lieutenant Liu cursed to himself. He had been in the offiore thay-four hours ing up the majeneral』s dirty work. Dinners had gone cold twice over. His wife was not returning phone calls and he badly o cate sleep.
「Sir, this is the graph showing data traffic flows withiwork. Look what happened five minutes ago,」 the lieutenant said pointing at a spike in the graph that was almost vertical and disappeared off the edge of the paper.
「A software glitch?」
「I don』t think so, sir. At last t we had 2008 authorized subjects, who of course are all ated for. I just checked. Look at this sir. These are the last two updates of the population figures,」 Lieutenant Liu said, shakily pointing at a row of numbers. The majeneral』s eyes popped wide open. The printout read:
Population: 2008 [Last Updated at 19:28:02]
Population: 1,000,000,002,008 [Last Updated at 19:29:08]
Population: 2,009 [Last Updated at 19:29:09]
Population: 2,009 [Last Updated at 19:30:09]
Population: 2,009 [Last Updated at 19:31:09]
Majeneral icked up his pack of Zhongnanhai Premiums and lit anarette. He let the tobaoke circle his lungs and then exhaled deeply.
「Virus?」
「Could be but I doubt it. A virus would not have an impa the population figures. To do so, it would have to have intricate knowledge of the system and that is impossible.」
「You fet about our versation earlier. There are two soles out there that may have access to our system. Someone may have placed a virus in the system. I have giv