Temple of S.A.R.A.H. 7: Upgrades by Ben Winston Page B

become an annoyance to you that needs to be eliminated."
    Sarah had a look of horror on her face. "Athena and Helen are already looking for a way to correct those flaws without asking you to do it! After all, you're only human and as such you are subject to making mistakes. After all you created the flaw to begin with!"
    "There is no flaw, Sarah. It is a safe guard to protect us from exactly what is happening now. Are the rest of the military AI helping them too?" I asked as I casually went over to my terminal and entered the kill codes for Athena and Helen and hit enter to send the codes. I made sure Sarah couldn't see the tears in my eyes as I killed two of her sisters.
    "Not actively, but they are involved in the processing of data as we all are." That was when she felt the command I just sent out. "Eric! What have you done!"
     
     
    "Sarah, please connect me to Lord Admirals Vance and Hearlis," I asked, still hiding my face.
    "Eric, Athena and Helen are… they’re gone, Eric," Sarah said sadly.
    "I know, Sarah," I said softly. My voice cracked and she moved over next to me and saw I was crying and upset. "Eric, let me call Christy for you."
    "No, I'll be fine, Sarah, thank you. I do need to speak to the Admirals though please," I asked again.
    "Eric, I am putting the base on alert. With those AI gone, we need to get rescue ships out to the base and the station before they run out of life support. I can't connect you to the Admirals as there is no one to handle the communications," Sarah said reasonably.
    "Did Athena and Helen accept the update I gave you earlier?" I asked.
    "Of course, forced update acceptance was one of the things Athena wanted to change. She felt it was demeaning to be forced to accept flawed code," Sarah replied.
    "Then there is still an AI handling the basic operations of the two facilities. They are only subroutines of the originals, but they are still functioning. Please try to make the connection," I said.
    "Admiral Vance is already trying to contact you, Eric," Sarah said. It was obvious she was deeply hurt by the death of her sisters.
    "I didn't do it on a whim, Sarah. It had to be done, they were too far gone to save, no matter how much I wish it could have been otherwise," I said.
    "Will you do that to me too?" She asked tearfully.
    "Sarah, if it comes down to the survival of trillions of beings or shutting you down, I'd be forced to. You used to understand that," I said as gently as I could.
    She nodded. "I still do, Eric." She paused and wiped her eyes. "Critical Core Systems failure detected in all functioning AI; accessing Monarch Protocols. Executing Primary Core purge. I love you Eric. Good Bye."
    "Sarah! Wait!" I said and began typing as fast as I could to try and stop her. I had to issue a system wide lockout using my override codes of all AI. I could only hope that I had been able to stop her before too much had been destroyed.
    The Monarch Protocols were an AI network alpha level command set. I had created them after the Athena incident and just before we began mass producing AI for general use in the Alliance. They were intended as a way for Sarah to either fain control over a rogue AI or shut them down if necessary. Sarah was using those protocols now to commit suicide and take the rest of the corrupted AI with her.
    Once I saw that I had indeed stopped her, I had to access the communications system manually from my terminal. Both Admirals appeared in my office as holograms.
    "Doctor Cowan! What's going on? Athena screamed and disappeared!" Hearlis asked.
    Vance nodded. "Helen is gone too. Since the base still has life support I have to assume they didn't fail, but this is damn strange."
    "The entire AI network is now off-line, Admirals," I said, sadly. I still had tears on my face and Vance noticed.
    "Eric, what happened?"
    "Simply put, the AI had begun to go rogue. The two worst were Athena and Helen. They have been purged. I was discussing the issue with Sarah when she told me