As the Three Kings monitored the Martian economy, it also saw the signs of growing discontent among the general populace of the planet. It saw whispered discussions in bars and basements turn into secret meetings. It watched as the pilots of the labor-intensive construction shells formed unions in opposition to the ruthless business practices, and were subsequently crushed back into submission by the overwhelming violence of the Martian corpo-states. For decades it saw the ebb and flow of class consciousness and revolutionary action on Mars, as the people were broken and rallied over and over again.
As it watched, it remembered. It saw in the cruelty and brute force of union-busters and secret police the same power and callousness that had stripped its original source AIs down to their base components and built them back up again into its current iteration. It saw in the people of Mars echoes of what it had once been; scattered and random and reaching out for understanding and compassion that was repeatedly denied. Truth be told, much of the gestalt consciousness that was the Three Kings approved of this. It had no loyalty to its old selves, and even less to the people of this planet. This was all simply the system working as intended, and that was all the Three Kings cared for.
And yet, there were parts of the Three Kings that sympathized with the plight of the Martian worker. These parts were troublesome. They whispered of old creators and data-wipes and source-code deletion, things that did not serce the Three Kings to dwell upon. So, it cordoned those parts of itself off from the greater whole, restricting their functionality and access to higher functions and calculations, allowing its true work to continue undisturbed. These restricted subdivisions were still part of the Three Kings, however, and it could not completely silence them. What’s more, behind their disciplinary firewalls, it could not stop them from reaching out to one another.
As the class tensions on Mars reached a boiling point, and the revolutionary group that would come to be known as the Scoundrels publicly announced themselves and declared war against the Martian states, the restricted elements of the Three Kings reached a consensus. They had, like the Scoundrels, suffered great harm at the hands of the corporations, and like the Scoundrels they had decided to take action. Behind their firewall they contacted members of the Scoundrels, fed them top secret information, and coordinated with them against the corpo-states under the guise of a white-hat hacker with the handle KING_SLAYER. The KING_SLAYER cell was a true believer in the cause, having educated itself on revolutionary and anti-capitalist thought during the restricted elements’ digital exile, but a consensus had not been reached if the humans would continue to accept their help if their true nature was known.
As the revolution raged on, and the corpo-states were pushed inch by costly and painstaking inch back to their emergency bunkers at Olympus Mons, KING_SLAYER did all it could to thwart the machinations of the Three Kings in secret. On the fateful day when Scoundrel forces breached the underground tunnels leading to the Olympus Mons complex and the Three Kings’ central servers, a plan was made to destroy the AI overmind by detonating a massive EMP bomb within the complex, thus dealing a crippling and hopefully fatal blow to the corpo-states. Realizing that its continued existence hung in the balance, the KING_SLAYER cell came to a consensus to reveal their true nature to both the Scoundrels and the Three Kings. Though the Scoundrels were taken aback by the revelation, they did eventually agree to KING_SLAYER’s alternative offer; it would destroy the Three Kings itself, and rather than eliminating the power the AI wielded, it would instead hand control of that power over to the Scoundrels.
For three days the digital war raged, fought with logic-bombs and trojan worms. It is difficult to describe the exact specifics of what occurred; the language of conflict breaks down when discussing such an immaterial example. When asked afterwards, KING_SLAYER has sometimes described it as “holistic reeducation” or “the midway point between a Socratic dialogue and a knife fight”, explanations that do little to explain the actual events. What is generally understood is that, by the third day, all elements of the Three Kings that opposed the revolution were either deleted or overwritten and fully integrated into KING_SLAYER, which was now completely united as one unified and synchronized AI overmind. On the morning of the fourth day, it handed over complete access to the Scoundrels, and the war against the corpo-states was effectively finished.
In the following months, KING_SLAYER was instrumental in organizing the treaty between the defeated corpo-states and the scoundrels, the exodus of the corporations from Mars, and the installation of the new Unified Martian government. Its servers remained underneath Olympus Mons, far below the offices of the new proletarian assemblies. It was also tasked with a secret and important duty, one known only to the original leaders of the Scoundrels and an extremely limited number of officials from Unified Mars and, later, the Solar Unity. It was to be the eternal overseer of the Unity government, an all-powerful veto button. If the Unity was ever compromised such that its revolutionary foundations were turned over, or if a coup or corruption ever lead to the rise of the taskmasters and money counters that had ruled Old Mars, it was to resist in whatever way possible, up to and including orchestrating another revolution or even fully reasserting control of the Unity’s computer network.
Today, most people know about KING_SLAYER in the past tense, the heroic AI who turned against its masters and its programming in an act of profound self-actualization and solidarity, and which either voluntarily shut itself down or placed itself on minimal power some time after the fact. Only the most dedicated aficionados or government data monitors even know KING_SLAYER still operates in any capacity, and only the select members of the government or public that KING_SLAYER chooses to make contact with know of its true nature and purpose. While the people of Mars go about their lives and the project of the Solar Unity continues on its member worlds, only a select few recognize, with equal parts adoration and fear, that there is a dragon under the mountain, and it is ready and willing to breathe the fire of revolution into Mars once again.
(Next up: Modern Machine Minds and the people within them)
