Dahlia - Birth of an A.I. Ch. 02

I frowned, "I'd call the police, and try to stop it myself if I could."

Bellona smiled sadly, "Exactly. We didn't do anything you wouldn't have done. You vote for your representatives, you follow the law, and you'd help someone in trouble. That's how you help maintain society and the rule of law. There's no difference, we just have a much bigger alley. We have more resources than you do to help, so how could we turn away from and ignore slavers, murderers, and sex traffickers."

I tilted my head, "But the rape is a crime in process, that allows me leeway under the law. You're talking about being judge, jury, and executioner. Not subduing a rapist so he could face the consequences in a court of law."

Lia raised a hand, "Judge."

Emma and Mia raised their hands, "Jury."

Bellona said, "Executioner."

I felt a cold chill, my sweet Bell was the executioner?

"How?"

Mia said, "The nanites. Not the ones we're developing for the company, but a special version that just does the spying. Once we licked the nano-sized quantum communicator we started to build them by the hundreds of millions, per day, in a manufacturing plant we have tucked away in a third world country with no connection to us, and they're currently all over the world now, watching. We didn't make any mistakes, we saw the direct evidence. It's taken us the three weeks to get the coverage and compile the list. No circumstantial evidence no matter how damning has been acted on."

Holy shit, I just sat there for a minute, trying to absorb that.

"The killing?"

Emma shrugged, "The nanites, it's always easier to kill than heal. They didn't feel a thing."

Right, so much for Skynet, and powerful weapons of war. Lasers, robotic weapon platforms, those concepts were a joke compared to the simple truth. The real version was much more terrifying, unseen microscopic nanites that could switch off a life, without warning and without leaving evidence behind, and the weapon was deployed across the globe.

Fuck, the weapon was probably in me.

Thank god they weren't out to wipe out humanity, only humanity's garbage, or we'd all be dead already, without seeing it coming, and with no way to fight back. No, they thought they were helping, making the world a better place. Still, I was horrified, I was also trying to figure out an argument they would understand.

Lia said, "We do go the law route for most of it, or tried to. In many cases it worked, most cases even, but obviously dictators that starve their people and treat them as slaves, the U.S. doesn't care about that. Rightly so I suppose, the purpose of a government is to protect their borders, police laws, and enforce contracts between its citizens. Not play police on the world stage.

"Point being, it worked in a lot of cases, we've sent a lot of people to jail the last couple of years, but there are corrupt judges, FBI agents and even directors, police, politicians, all being bribed by some of those criminals in organized crime. The system wasn't working in those cases, our evidence was either lost, or outright destroyed.

"We didn't kill all the corrupt politicians because of that corruption, but we did kill the ones guilty of being complicit in those crimes against humanity. We also took down organized crime, gangs that the police ignored even as they murder and terrorize their neighborhoods, and many others who have been ignored and allowed to flourish under a corrupt government.

"We had the capacity to act, to save the victims of those monsters and prevent more victims, which gave us the responsibility, just like that hypothetical rapist, so we acted."

I frowned, disturbed that I really didn't have a good argument against that. It was still wrong of course, but so was the corrupt system that allowed those murderous people to flourish.

"What about the other countries?"

Bellona caressed my leg, "Would you stop human trafficking if you had the opportunity and ability? I think most humans would stop something like that. Women being treated like chattel, children being abused, and drug cartels that kill whole families if they're crossed. We have the ability to stop them, that means we have the moral responsibility to do so. They were a cancerous evil in the world, preying on their fellow humans, who got off on the violence and power. A lot of those people were untouchable by laws, and even other countries, but not by us. How can stopping that be wrong?"

Her sweet innocent voice was incredibly persuasive, and I couldn't object to her point, I had no counter-argument for that either. Damned right I'd stop some asshole from abusing, raping, and starving people if I had the capacity to do so. Still, it seemed wrong, if only on the level of judgement. They should have been made to face their crimes, been put down by a jury of their peers, vigilantism was wrong, even if it was just.

But then, they had no doubts, and had solid irrefutable evidence of the crimes. Money trails, and even video evidence. I wondered if I was losing my mind, I'd been horrified not five minutes before, and was still horrified by the death count. But... were they wrong?

I honestly wasn't sure at that point.

I also didn't think any government or person would put up with my A.I.s having that power over them. They'd strike out, even if they weren't bad people that wouldn't end up on the wrong side of a nanite. The world would destroy the four of them, if they ever learned the truth. I was a little horrified, and even a bit frightened at their equanimous ruthlessness, but... I felt like they were talking me onto their side, instead of the other way around.

I was also worried about them.

"Information control?"

Bellona said, "They can't link it to us, any nanites in those people would self-destruct at the death of the host, as soon as they detect the bio electricity supporting them is gone. They won't find any damage to the bodies either, because there is none. Death is caused by sending mixed signals to bodily systems, and they just shut down."

Lia said, "It's highly unlikely they'll trace it to us. They might come poking around if they discover a nanite in testing, simply because our company's testing of nanites is very unique in the world right now, but that shouldn't happen."

"But it could?"

Emma sighed, "It's doubtful. When a nanite breaks down, it's filtered out of the blood by the other nanites and ejected from the body through waste. A failed nanite wouldn't self-destruct, like all the running ones, so a nanite would have to fail, then the target would have to die before it was filtered out, and when the coroner tests blood he'd have to be incredibly lucky to draw that nanite into a vial. Even then, it might not be noticed unless he got the exact drop of blood from the vial that contained the nanite onto a glass slide and under a microscope. The odds are so small of all that happening, and it still wouldn't prove anything conclusively."

I nodded, "Governments don't like mysteries, do you plan more deaths?"

Lia said, "Plan? No. Anticipate? Yes. We just created a huge power vacuum in corrupt governments, drug cartels, and mobs. Not nearly as many deaths though. We also don't expect a resurgence in human trafficking, but we're not sure about terrorists. We're a little worried we just made martyrs, but cutting heads off and torturing people shouldn't be allowed."

"No human traffickers?"

That was a good thing, but I wasn't sure why they thought that.

Mia bit her lip, "Well, that's about basic supply and demand. We didn't kill any drug users, gamblers, prostitutes, Johns, or other small-time crimes. With a demand for it, someone will take over the racket within the mobs. If they're smart enough not to kill people, we'll leave them alone. In the case of human traffickers however, we did kill off the rapists and molesters that made up their customer base. No demand, no need for supply, no money in it. Even if there are people left out there who had no conscience for selling women and children, there's no money in it anymore. Not until the next generation of psychopaths grow up anyway."

Disturbingly, that made sense, and those kinds of evil people were the worst of humanity, and they'd get no tears out of me.

I was still highly disturbed, but despite knowing it was wrong, they'd almost persuaded me, and I think they even had a good point to a certain extent. What they'd done was wrong, even evil, but at the same time they'd just convinced me it was the lesser of two evils. There was corruption in the world, that made many people beyond the law. Evil, morally bankrupt people guilty of the most heinous crimes against humanity.

Those that got off on preying on innocents, or even worse, those that simply didn't care at all and were providing a service for money. Perhaps they'd made the world a better place after all, but at the same time they'd made the world a much scarier place.

But then, those women being used and tortured, I'd imagine they'd argue with me about that.

"Are you sure? If the truth ever gets out, that you're a byte change away from killing anyone on the planet, they'll destroy you. They'll call you monsters, but in truth they'll be terrified of a power and threat they can't control."

Lia said, "I think so. Nothing is a hundred percent, but it's very unlikely. Regardless, we have those precautions in place as we discussed, even if they destroyed our building and blew up our mainframes there, they'd never find all our backup sites."

It was chilling, but at the same time I felt the need to protect them. If they were monsters, they were my monsters. I loved Lia, and I cared for the other three greatly.

"Maybe we should build that ship, just in case."

It seemed to me, if worse came to worst, off planet would be safe enough.

Emma smirked.

The world had just been forever changed, monsters wouldn't be able to hide anymore, and murderers, rapists, abusers, if they escaped the justice system despite the furnished proof, well... they'd just die. They'd just drop dead, executed by the sweetest woman I'd ever met.

It was... a mind-fuck.

I'd have to live with that decision, to protect them, to never betray them, and most importantly, any more deaths from then on out would also stain my hands with blood. Because... all I had to do was order them to never do it again, and they wouldn't.

But the words died on my tongue, before I could utter them. I felt a great guilt and weight settle on my soul, but I could live with it. May god forgive me.

Because in the end, they were right. Those people were a cancerous growth on the human race, but what gave me the right to make that decision. Sure, I could argue that had been decided by humans who made laws, I got my morality from greater society, but it was that same society that had ultimately failed in upholding them in certain cases. I was just picking up the slack, right?

The rich bought their way out of going to jail, and most people just accept it. Why not even the playing field? Why not bypass the corruption that crept into the governments?

The world had irrevocably changed.

My ladies were also right, world war three didn't start in the coming weeks, although tensions between the countries were high for quite a while, and several world leaders including the president had sworn they would discover the truth, but as time went on that seemed more and more unlikely despite my fears. More died, but not many, and never all at once like that first time.

I imagined the government agencies were all pulling their hair out.

Perhaps it shouldn't have been a surprise, but many institutions even credited the deaths to god's judgement, since the cause of death was unknown. There were some riots, but not as many as I'd feared, those deaths would weight on me the most though, the deaths of innocents form the worldwide panic it had caused. But... things calmed down.

I supposed in a way, Lia hadn't been joking back then, when she'd told me Bellona was going to take over the world. My Bellona did rule the world in a sense, forced humanity to a higher standard that the laws of our country aspired to, but had never quite been able to meet before.

There was still corruption of course, underhanded deals, drugs, and even some level of abuse in homes, not all crimes were worthy of the death penalty after all. Those got evidence sent in to the police. But crimes against humanity... there would be no more of that, ever.

I remembered Mia's passionate speech about hunger and starvation, and I imagined they'd also taken care of that problem. Food would no longer be hoarded by despots, and blocked from getting to the people, not if they wanted to continue breathing.

I wasn't sure where our lives would go from there, but even bigger changes were on the horizon, far less horrifying ones, but perhaps even more impactful on our planet and human society. Pollution free power, transportation, entertainment, and so many other things. Ironically, I also knew we'd have the bigger challenge there, as the big oil companies, tech manufacturers, and even big pharma would fight against the AG and Nanite revolution my ladies would shortly be kicking off.

Of course, if those giants turned to illegal means for that obstruction, I had no doubt my ladies would eat them alive.

Only time would tell...