T2 - 01 - The New John Connor Chronicles - Dark Futures by Russell Blackford Page B

robot that came back from the future—like it says there?" He pointed contemptuously at the material.
    "Well, given the circumstances, it's not much wackier than anything else." For a moment there was a silence between them. "You know what I mean," Miles said gently. "For all we can tell, that's how we got the technology in the first place."
    It seemed crazy expressing these doubts to his client. Not good marketing, Miles , he thought. Charles Layton and Oscar Cruz wouldn't approve. Still, the government already understood the circumstances in which the 1984 chip had been found in a Cyberdyne plant. Everyone knew how strange it was. They all had to face the facts.
    "Yeah," Reed said, "I know. I can't explain the 1984 chip, either."
    "No, none of us can, and I'm getting ready to believe almost anything."
    Whatever the device discovered back in 1984 had been, the nanochip had been eerily advanced. It had given Miles and his people the start they'd needed to develop AI chips that now controlled many of America 's defense assets, culminating in the massively parallel system of nanoprocessors that made up the Skynet AI
    "So what are you advising me to do?" Jack said. "You want me to shut the sucker down?"
    "Well, I don't know about that. Any formal Cyberdyne advice would    have   to   come from   Oscar   or Charles."
    Jack gave a cynical smile. "How about off the record?"
    "Off the record?"
    "Yeah. What would you do? Off the record, Miles. Don't jerk me around."
    "I think we should suspend the system's operations for the rest of the night."
    "Yeah? You're really serious, aren't you? Look, I hear what you're saying, but—"
    "Let's put the issue completely beyond doubt. It's not like we don't have back-up at
Cheyenne
Mountain
."
    "Look at it from my point of view. You're advising me to shut down a functioning strategic tool because some nutcase says it's going to go berserk and cause a nuclear war, right? But that can't happen, Miles—you know that as well as I do. The whole system's not set up that way."
    "But it's what's these printouts predict, and the people who post this stuff have a track record for being right."
    "Not about anything like that."
    Miles thought that over. "Sure. And it's probably all crazy, or a hoax." He smiled. "Don't worry, I'm not going nuts myself. But the point remains: Whoever started this is amazingly well-informed, whether it's Connor or—I don't know—whoever. I realize that the system can't just go berserk, but something's behind all this. I wish I knew what."
    "You're thinking in terms of sabotage?"
    "Yeah, maybe, though I can't see how—"
    "No, and it'd be pretty damn funny for these people to try to sabotage the system to bring about the very result they most fear."
    "Yeah, I know."
    "Anyway, what good would it do them?" Jack paused for emphasis. "Look, everyone's briefed from the President down. Okay? You know the system can't go firing off missiles without human confirmation. If there is some sort of glitch, we'll deal with it. Right now, I just can't see the problem."
    "I can't see it either," Miles admitted, feeling defeated, but wanting to persist, just a little further, if only to see whether Jack could put his fears at rest. "Not the exact problem. But, on top of all this, the system is an order of magnitude better than we designed it to be. We've implemented something that we don't fully understand. It's so advanced, and it's starting to act almost like it's alive."
    "Yeah, okay, but that doesn't mean it's unsafe. Miles, I can't go back to the President and explain that I took the system down for hours just because of this stuff on the Net...and a bad feeling you've been getting lately... because the system is too good Give me a break, I need something better than that."
    Miles sighed. "Yeah, I know." He rose. "Look, thanks for your time, Jack. It's clarified things. I'll see you later on."
    "Sure. What are you going to do now?"
    "I'm going to have a talk to Skynet."
    Jack