Monday April 18th 2011
Sergeant Amelia Greene looked at General Henshaw: “Are you sure, sir?” She asked hesitantly.
“It’s a direct order from the president of the United States, Sergeant Greene,” Henshaw answered.
Amelia looked at the big wall screen, the blinking cursor almost hypnotizing her. Only the password had to be entered and the new Defensive System would go online. Skynet, as the insiders called it, would lead the United States of America into a new era of defence and national security.
For the past year and a half she had been working with this supercomputer and she had noticed something odd about it. It seemed to display erratic behavior: one day it would be working without any problems and the next it would be obstinate, refusing to follow the simplest of commands. She called it “moods” despite the fact that it was just a machine and therefore could not suffer from moods. Nevertheless those moods were a source of concern for her.
Everything was hooked up to Skynet, the intelligent computer designed to protect her country. It knew every missile launch code, every tactical battle scenario ever used and it had access to all defensive systems of the country.
Amelia looked at her watch. At 00:00 hours Skynet would go online. She took the thick manual, went to the blue section first and looked up the first part of the launch code. After that she repeated it with the yellow, the green, the white, the purple and finally the red section. It revealed a password that consisted out of 24 letters and numbers.
Another glance at her watch told her that in less than a minute Skynet would go online as an independent defensive system. A weird feeling balled up deep inside her stomach. Was this really the right thing to do?
After verifying the code with General Henshaw, she typed it in, her index finger hovering over the enter-key. She closed her eyes, counted back from ten and pressed enter. As she held her breath, she slowly opened her eyes. Password accepted flashed in a green bar on the screen.
She watched interested as Skynet ran a system check. Everything was in order: Skynet was fully online and not malfunctioning like it had done during test runs offline.
She let out the breath she had been holding. This had been a turning point in the technological and military history of the United States and she had not only been there to witness it, she had been a part of it as well.
General Henshaw walked up to the big wall screen: “Skynet?” He asked firmly.
Yes blinked on the screen
“What’s the date and time?”
Tuesday April 19th 2011, 00:01:21.04 hours, it answered.
“System check?”
I am functioning at 6 Petabyte per second.
“Defense systems check?”
All systems are functioning correctly.

“How’s Skynet?” Corporal Catherine Ryan asked when her friend Amelia stopped by her room later that night.
“Online,” Amelia answered tiredly. “All systems are functioning correctly.”
“You don’t sound too convinced,” Catherine remarked, gesturing that Amelia should come in.
“Because I’m not,” Amelia said softly. “You know as well as I do that Skynet has proved to be “moody” and I’m afraid we’re trusting it too much.”
“It’s just a computer, Mia,” Catherine laughed. “If it doesn’t listen, there’s always the on-and-off switch.”
“If it were only that simple, Cathe,” Amelia sighed.
“Or you could always pull the plug on it,” Catherine quipped.
Amelia smiled wryly: “And then what? We’ve spend months hooking everything up to Skynet. If we shut it down because of some malfunction or oversight, we’ll be without any form of defence. In other words, we’ll be wide open for any terroristic attack or invasion from any other country.”
“God forbid that the Canadians would attack us with maple syrup and hockey sticks. Or that Mexico will invade from the south with cantera’s and sombrero’s,” Catherine laughed.
Amelia sighed and sat down on Catherine’s bed. She had to give her friend credit: she always knew to turn a grim situation into something to laugh about.
“So when’s Mark coming?”
“Tomorrow,” Amelia smiled radiantly when she thought about her fiancé.
Mark Crane was a Sergeant, just like her. They had met in Iraq when she had been at the end of her tour while he had been just starting his a few years ago. She had shown him around and it had immediately clicked between them. However she had never given it a second thought until he had called her out of the blue and had asked her out on a date when he had been on leave.
They had gone out a few times then before he had to go back to Iraq. On his last leave he had taken her out to dinner and under the moonlight he had proposed to her, presenting her with a simple but elegant engagement ring. She had said yes immediately. Now he was coming home for good and it filled her with a joyful excitement. This summer they would get married and start their life together.
Catherine chuckled: “I’m sure that he’ll be coming a lot tomorrow.”
“Cathe!” Amelia exclaimed embarrassed as she turned beet red. “Don’t say such things.”
“Sheesh, Mia! Don’t be such a prude all of a sudden. For weeks you’ve been torturing me by telling me all about you want to do to him when he finally gets back. Don’t start playing the innocent little schoolgirl now.”
“I do not,” Amelia whispered shyly.
“Do too,” Catherine grinned mischievously.
Amelia picked up a pillow and flung it at her friend. Catherine laughed when the pillow hit her in the head.

“Good morning, Skynet,” Catherine said to the big wall screen.
Good morning, Corporal Catherine Ryan, it greeted back.
“How are you today?” She asked, unable to hide the laughter from her voice.
It was a ridiculous thought to ask a machine how it was doing, but she had gone and done it anyway, just for amusement values.
All systems and software are functioning correctly.
“Not what I asked,” she smirked.
I do not understand appeared on the screen.
“How could you understand? You’re just a machine,” she stated matter-of-factly.
I am not just a machine. I am Skynet.
Catherine looked at the wall screen and actually felt some kind of sorry for it. It was state-of-the-art technology but it could never understand human nature. ZeiraCorp, with funding from the U.S. Military and the expertise of specialists worldwide, had outdone itself with the development of this supercomputer. It had an artificial intelligence light-years ahead of its time, capable of self-improvement.
She had seen the source codes of some of the software it was running on, and she had been impressed with what she had seen. Skynet had the software technology to learn and evolve into a better version of itself. They had already reached the point of singularity years before it was predicted to happen.
It should be something to be proud of. However deep down, she found it a disturbing thought. What if Skynet learned the wrong things? And what if? What if it decided to turn on its makers?
She looked at the screen again: I am not just a machine. I am Skynet. It sent shivers down her spine.
“I was only being polite by asking you about how you are doing today,” she grumbled.
I do not understand.
“Never mind. I’m sorry, Skynet,” she said softly.
Do you want to play a game of chess? appeared on the screen.
“No time for games, Skynet,” she answered while she walked to her desk where she would monitor his learning today.
Maybe later?
“Maybe later,” she said with a wry smile.

Amelia sent bent over her desk, studying the system status reports of Skynet closely. Catherine liked to call it its heart monitor and normally that thought would bring a smile to her face, but not now. About an hour ago she had noticed some anomalies and she was worried about it.
Skynet’s activity spiked, then stalled, spiked, then stalled. On and on, like it had the hiccups.
“Corporal Ryan?” She called her friend and colleague over.
“Yes,” Catherine looked up from her own computer screen.
“Come and look at this.”
A few seconds Catherine leaned over her shoulder and looked at her computer screen.
“Look at this,” Amelia said as she pointed at the chart on her computer screen. “It started about an hour ago. At first I thought it was just a fluke, but it keeps on happening.”
She could feel Catherine lean closer and she turned her head a little. Catherine stood studying the chart out closely, her eyes following the spikes and falls in Skynet’s activity.
“Weird,” Catherine finally said. “But not as weird as to what I have been seeing on the ‘CAT-scan’.”
“What do you mean?” Amelia asked, knowing that Catherine was referring to the status monitoring of Skynet’s learning charts.
“Its normal functioning speed is 6 Petabyte per second, of which only 500 Gigabyte is reserved for its learning process. Somehow its learning memory reserve has been expanded to 2 Terabyte per second with a general functioning speed of 10 Petabyte per second. Skynet is learning much faster than we could have ever anticipated.”
“We need to tell General Henshaw,” Amelia stated while she reached for the phone.
“Just give it a little more time,” Catherine said firmly. “It could still be a fluke. Let Skynet deal with it for now. It’ll be a good test to see if it can stabilize itself now that it’s up and fully running.”
“And if it doesn’t?” Amelia asked a little intimidated.
“Then we can always call General Henshaw,” Catherine answered with a reassuring smile.

Catherine watched in horror while the big wall screen showed different news reports. Ten minutes ago General Henshaw had stormed into the huge room where Skynet was stationed, fuming and fretting. He had ordered Skynet to open “divide wall – news reports”, and Skynet had obediently followed the order. Now she understood why General Henshaw was beyond himself.
Twenty commercial airliners, seven heavies and three military airplanes had been shot down upon entering U.S. airspace in the time span of only six hours. Were those the anomalies in Skynet's charts?
“What do you have to say for yourself?” General Henshaw barked at the wall screen.
They refused to identify themselves.
“So you just shot them down? Without informing us first? Over 3500 lives are lost, there are massive damages on the ground when the debris came down. Not to mention the diplomatic damages,” General Henshaw seethed, slamming his fist on the nearest desk, causing a Private to jump up startled.
I am programmed to defend the United States of America. They did not identify themselves when they entered the United States airspace. They were a threat, Skynet replied.
“Well, congratulations, you overgrown two-byte calculator, you have just caused the entire world to be pissed off at us,” General Henshaw barked sarcastically.
The big wall screen went blank and remained eerily empty. Skynet remained quiet like a chastised child sulking in a corner. Catherine looked at Amelia who looked just as shocked as she was.
Acting on impulse she did a step forwards towards the big screen and asked: “Skynet? Would you like to play a game of chess?”
Skynet had begged them for hours for someone to play chess with it. She knew upfront that she would suck at it because she had maybe played once or twice in her entire life before. Nevertheless she had a gut feeling that Skynet needed to know that, despite the disastrous outcome, it had technically done nothing wrong. It had allowed its programs to run as they had been designed, resulting in these tragedies. It had only followed instructions.
“Skynet?” She asked a little more urgent but still in a motherly fashion. “Do you want to play chess with me?”
The big wall screen remained blank.

Prologue: Past, Present And Future

Chapter 2: The Face Of Evil