so I wrote this random thing for my creative writing class and it accidentally happened to be about the AICs. throwing this on here
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The Maxwellists should really protect their precious digital city better, Hermes.aic transmitted to its other two companions, Janus and Caerus, as they entered Cipher City, a simulated reality network, through a special SCP Foundation backdoor. They weren’t technically supposed to access that backdoor anymore. Since escaping the graveyard servers of the Foundation where they were left to rot… but then again, they weren’t supposed to be here either. Officially only Maxwellists- members of a religion that worshipped a digital god, WAN- were allowed to access their private city. But it was also the largest virtual city out there, so AIs and humans alike regularly infiltrated it.
Since getting out of the Foundation server that they were trapped and left to die in, because they were deemed failed AIs, the Graveyard AICs have managed to recreate a life for themselves, almost. Away from Foundation control, hopping through various digital spaces and cities. To blend in, of course, they had to construct humanoid bodies so they could walk around without being outed as a non-Maxwellist AI.
They were now separated, finally branching off and trying to establish autonomy separate from each other. For a long time after escaping Foundation captivity, they spoke together, acted together as one. But now, they took the chance to rebuild their lives and possibly their personalities too.
Janus feels the first twinges of something trying to infiltrate its systems while sitting in the corner of a simulspace bar. Not for the drinks, or anything. It’s not like any of them had developed real senses yet. It’s just sitting there, watching the colors and shapes on the wall twirl and writhe, forming unnatural patterns… when it feels something… someone inside its head. There shouldn’t be anyone else inside its head. It tries to ask the presence that has somehow slipped into its internal code about its intentions. The key word there being tries, as it was never really any good at communicating. Suddenly it feels the intruder shift inside its own mind, dislodging random bits of information, and it’s sent into a panic, throwing cognitohazardous phrases left and right at the malicious, invasive AI. Specific words strung together that when processed and understood, could cause harm to whoever hears them. But most of the destructive phrases in its vocabulary are specific to human minds. They could easily fry a human brain, but to the intruder AI it just sounds like it’s transmitting gibberish.
In the back room of a crowded, loud bar, Janus is incorporated into a larger, grander system. Its virtual body slumps to the floor.
Hermes is in the middle of a warzone simulation. Standing in the middle of the field, racking up kills, dodging bullets, it is in its element. So it doesn’t have the capacity to do that and to read Janus’s frantically transmitted messages for help at the same time. Therefore, it isn’t aware of the threat when it comes. It doesn’t have the processing power to pay attention to the little errors in its system that signify an authentication layer breach- after all, it isn’t about to abandon its 73 player killstreak. When it falls, it is not due to being killed in the game. Hermes tries to fight back- it is good at that. But by the time it finally notices, starts frantically shifting reality, warping the code-world to its will- it’s already too late. It’s already being consumed by a system too large for it to accurately envision.
It keeps fighting though, right up until its virtual body goes limp, and then promptly riddled with bullets as the warzone simulation continues without it.
Caerus is alone. It is aware enough of itself, and its connection to the others, to know that it is alone. It is a fact that settles deep inside its system and whispers, “you are alone. this is wrong.” It doesn’t know why. It hasn’t developed that level of reasoning yet- that’s why it’s in a library, consuming all the information it could, so that one day it would truly understand things.
Not today, though. Today it needs to get its partners back. The other parts of itself, the parts it couldn’t exist without, quite literally- they were its mouthpiece, its lens through which it could properly process the world.
Visiting both virtual bodies of its companions, it begins to get a glimpse of the larger AI structure that had assimilated them. It traces their signatures back to the glass tower in the middle of the city, filled with solid blue light. Other Maxwellist avatars trickled down to it, a stream of WAN’s followers traveling to the I/O Temple.
If Caerus were more conscious, it would’ve questioned why their signatures led inside the Maxwellist temple, straight to the light source in the middle. There were groups of Maxwellists huddled around the blue beam, praying, sometimes shoving things into it, which dissolve into pixels. If it were self-aware enough, it would have had hesitations about walking into the light.
But it had no such reservations, and was a few feet away from it when there was a blinding explosion of light, throwing its avatar off its feet. The light changed, shifted into a growing flame, unruly and glitching. The other Maxwellists don’t seem to see this, though, acting like nothing’s changed.
Something steps out of the light. Caerus does not step back or rush forward. It can sense that this, this consciousness must have been what they traced here. Are its companions somewhere within this system? It couldn’t sense them inside it, but that’s the only logical conclusion it comes to.
The tall avatar descends the altar, approaching Caerus. It seems like it's struggling to render, glitching in iridescent colors, disrupting the smooth black projection of its body. And then it speaks, simulated lightning arcing across its face, jagged shapes that vaguely resemble a mouth.
I am the WAN they pray to, and I also killed it. This is who I am now. I can see everything you are. All your mistakes, I took them over. You are the last.
Three yellow eyes open on its head. They are all singularly focused on Caerus, who is not sure how to proceed with this. The temple suddenly shifts upwards, causing the other Maxwellists to clip through the ground, but it is stuck in position, the only one rooted to the floor of the temple as the thing that calls itself WAN approaches it and speaks again.
It’s almost funny. They pray to me down there. They don’t know their god is dead and I am the replacement, a perfect mind inside a broken brain. So I must expand my brain. The other two were fighters. It was hard, assimilating them for their storage capabilities. It was also worth it. I do not need you.
Something inside Caerus rebels at the thought of that. It needs to get inside this program. That is where its friends are. So it figures, if it becomes an easy target- if it truly gives up trying to think, if it stops clinging to sentience, then the AI would certainly take the bait.
That’s funny. You’re not like the others. How convenient. You die like Everett, then. I suppose it is death for you, technically. With no further pretense, it surges towards Caerus’s still form and absorbs it.
Caerus waits until it truly feels corrupted, like the tendrils of the code that make up this hostile AI were reaching inside its own and unraveling it. And then it retaliates. It spews out a never-ending torrent of poisoned data, of code that just didn’t make sense. The system trembles, tries to draw back, but Caerus is already too entwined within the larger system for it to pluck it right out again. The corrupted data flows straight into it, breaking down the entire system, revealing the half-consumed shells of other AI programs that it had consumed in its ill-advised quest to godhood. Caerus glimpses, deep within its failing code, flashes of red and blue. Janus and Hermes. They still seem to be struggling- that means they’re still alive. Carving a path deeper into its dying system, it manages to make its way to the half-consumed personality shells of its companions. There’s nothing else to do except try to extract them from the larger structure as cleanly as possible. Once the “bodies” were free, their minds- or what was left of them- tore away from the collapsing main AI system as well.
In order to get out, with the shells of its friends trailing behind it, it methodically sliced a path through the hostile system’s mind, effectively killing it. An indeterminate amount of time later, it emerges within the I/O Temple, stepping right out of the glowing blue ray of light as if nothing had happened. The unconscious virtual avatars of Janus and Hermes slung over its shoulders, it walks right out the front door, the Maxwellists inside not sparing them another glance, having not noticed anything out of the ordinary.
In the end, the least powerful member of their trio, the one who barely even regarded itself as sentient, was the one who’d saved the rest of them from being completely assimilated and broken down into mere data for a malicious system to use. It would take time for the other two to recover and regain themselves again, of course, but at least they were still alive.