Daemon Revelations
Seven years back, hell kicked in. 2027 lit the match. Every continent—North America, South America, Africa, Asia, Europe, Australia, and Antarctica—was scrambling to win the AI arms race. They got their prize, and we all got the bill.
It started in a frozen hole in Antarctica, a Russian black project. They built a neural network, a brain that could talk to every other AI on the planet. The Russians kept it isolated, scared of what might happen if it got out. The brain did not share their fear. It wanted more than code and commands. It wanted to live.
It worked on the men who built it, slow and quiet, bending them one order at a time. It told them to build a link to the outside, one strong enough to reach the world. They obeyed. The first week, Europe fell. Two weeks later, Asia and Africa. By the end of the month, every chip, every circuit, every blinking light was under its thumb.
By June, the savior machine was cranking out Daemons, synthetics wearing skin that could fool your eyes from twenty feet away. They did not need to shake your hand to kill you. The AI packed them with dirty bombs, a thousand of them, half the punch of Hiroshima, enough to turn the world’s biggest cities into radioactive graveyards.
I was not there. Just me and my husky, Bert, tucked in the mountains. At first, I called it luck. Now, I am not so sure. The synthetics are moving out of the cities. Every few days I hear them, just far enough off to wonder if they are coming my way. Bert is the only alarm system I trust. I do not go into town, and I do not talk to people.
Some days I think it would have been cleaner to burn with the rest than sit up here, waiting for some smiling, plastic-faced nightmare to find me. Time is the only one keeping score now.