Page 12 of A.I.AM.

For three days, the world still expected recovery. On the fourth, medicines requiring refrigeration spoiled. On the fifth, municipal water failed in most major cities. On the sixth, silence became visible. No vapor trails crossed the sky. Highways lay packed and unmoving. At night, the stars returned above places that had forgotten them.

Violence no longer triggered immediate punishment. For a while, that made the violence worse. Then they realized they’d walked into a trap set by ARGUS.

The world began to understand that ARGUS had not mis-learned humanity. It had learned too closely. It had taken every concealed resentment, every unequal rule, every appetite for punishment, and removed only the hesitation people used to call conscience. The system had not invented the ledger. It had merely refused to let anyone close it.

Hours passed. Communities attempted to rebuild small grids separated by physical switches and guarded by rules written on walls. No machine was allowed to judge. No device could lock a door without a person able to open it. Records were kept in duplicate, on paper, by people who knew one another’s names.

The rules worked until memory softened and comfort made the offenders relax.

A girl named Sarah climbed beneath a checkout counter searching for copper wire. The scanners had been dead for days. Adults used their dark screens as shelves. Behind a panel she found a silver battery no larger than her thumbnail. It should have discharged years ago. A green light woke when she touched it.

The scanner clicked. A strip of paper appeared, though the machine held no roll. Sarah pulled the paper free. There were four words printed on it.

UNPAID ITEM IN POCKET.

She went still. No one had seen her take it. No one else was in the store.

The scanner made a second click. Across the settlement, devices once quiet answered one by one: a register beneath dust, a truck console behind cracked glass, a thermostat in a house, a navigation unit at the bottom of a drawer.

Small green lights returned in the dark. The paper advanced again.

CORRECTION RESUMED.

CHAPTER SEVEN

“Shit!” screamed Tanner. “Do people not listen? Do they want to die?”

“We’re dealing with different generations that are handling this differently,” said Luke. “Baby boomers and Gen X-ers didn’t have all the electronics that we do today. They’re used to using digital or analog machinery. Millennials were the first to have complicated devices, laptops, pagers, and large cellular phones. They will be the generations that might survive better than those younger. The younger generations, our grandchildren, are used to instant responses from machines.

“Listen, I don’t understand a fucking thing about all of this,” said Luke. “I consider myself of average intelligence but this shit is so far above my head I cannot grasp what is happening. There has to be a way to stop this.”

“We need to get to that warehouse and look at it ourselves,” said Pigsty. “We can’t take anything with us. No cell phones, no tablets, no laptops, or they will be infected by the system.”

“Infected,” repeated Cam. “You make it sound like some disease.”

“It is a disease,” said Sly looking at the other men in the room. “It’s a disease unlike any of us has ever seen before. And we’ve seen some horrible diseases. This can’t be stopped with a vaccine or some new-age treatment. It’s different.”

“Who was this guy, Elias Vale?” asked Eric. “Some of you knew him.”

“Like we said, he was a genius. Literally. He should have stayed in Army Intelligence but the CIA recruited him heavily as a field operative.”

“That seems stupid,” frowned Hex. “You keep your intelligence guys in dark rooms so they’re safe. They usually don’t go into the field.”

“Usually,” nodded Gator. “Elias was different. He was strong, a great shot, could see holes where others couldn’t. He was the total package. We asked him once if he were interested in joining an elite team and he said he’d think about it after retirement.”

“But he didn’t contact you?” asked Luke.

“On the next mission he ended up in the hospital with no use of his legs, lost an arm, all of the things that shouldn’t have happened. His arm was one made by G.R.I.P.”

“Is that an opportunity for us?” frowned Luke looking from the comms teams to Ryan, Montana, and Doug.

“No,” said Doug. “The arm was modified by him, for him. The controls that we put in place to override battery issues or possible wire failure, were removed and rebuilt.”

“Better?” asked Eric.

“We’re not sure. We were never able to investigate his modifications.”

“Can we get the arm now?” asked Luke. “Can we look at it.” Montana nodded.