Episode 3.5 "Baba Valya"

“Give me the phone, Veronica. I have an idea.” She handed back my phone without looking at me fingers still massaging her eyeballs. I figured that the one person least likely to be affected by a technologic uprising would be Grandma Valya. Not only did she mistrust any piece of technology that wasn’t available in Communist Russia, she lived fifteen minutes away. She’s going to give me her special blend of Slavic-Jew grief for only calling when I need something, but given the choice between a scathing guilt trip or death at the place of my employment, it was a no-brainer. I dialed my grandma and prepared myself.

“‘Allo?” her husky Russian accent was disarmingly comforting at this particular moment in time.

“Baba Valya? It’s Irochka! How are you?” I shot an embarrassed look at Veronica as I revealed Grandma Valya’s pet name for me, but she was too busy jamming her fingers in her eyes to notice.

“Ah! Irochka! So long since your last call. It’s good to hear your voice.”

“It’s good to hear from you too, babushka. Um…listen, I’m kind of in trouble right now and…”

“Irochka,” She cut me off abruptly, “Have you seen the news? The scientists in…New…New Mexico think they have gotten a message from the…how do you say it? Kosmos? Very interesting, Irochka.” My grandma. Whenever something nerdy happens, she automatically thinks that I’ll find it absurdly interesting.

“Wow! That’s great, grandma!” I did my best to feign politeness given the dire circumstances within which I have found myself, “Hey listen, could you do me a favor?” I winced as I asked this question. For a brief millisecond, I seriously reconsidered taking my chances with the self-aware supercomputer.

“Irochka, Irochka…” Out come the wolves. I can almost see the white-blond bun of her hair bobbing back and forth as she shakes her head in disappointment. “Five years we’ve lived in the same state, and you only come to see your lonely babushka on the holidays? You only call when you need a favor? So much did your dedushka and I sacrifice to bring your mother to this country, only to have a grandson who won’t even come by for dinner? Oi, bozhe moi…” My grandma’s scolding was interrupted by an unexpectedly loud click-clack. Veronica and I looked up to see additional metal grilles descend from the ceiling and lock themselves into the floor. Veronica’s eyes widened. We were completely caged in.

I slowly brought my phone back up to my ear, “…and when I call you, it’s always work, work, work. It’s not good for a young boy like you to work so much. When do you have time to meet a girl, Irochka? When do…” It killed me to do it, but I rudely interrupted my grandmother.

“Baba, listen,” I gasped, “I’m really, really sorry to interrupt you, but I’m in a very dangerous place right now, and I need you to drive to Omni-Com where I work and pick me and my friend up!”

“Irochka, you are in danger?”

“Yes! Yes babushka! Can you please help me?”

“Oh bozhe! I’m coming, Irochka.” I put my phone back in my pocket and wiped the sweat from my hands.

“Okay. My grandma is on her way.”

“Your…your grandma? Did you just say you called your grandma?”

“Yeah…?”

“Dammit, Ira! Did you actually think about this plan? All you’ve done is thrown one more person into a dangerous situation. How in the hell is involving your grandmother going to help us in any way, shape, or form?” I paused to consider this question.

“There was this one time when I was a kid. I had begged my dad to drive one of these new ATV’s that our family had bought. There’s no way I was old enough, but my dad gave in. He figured that our back yard was safe enough, you know? Anyway, I was doing fine until took a sharp turn on a slope and the ATV flipped over on me. I thought it was over, but it seemed like as soon as the ATV crashed, it was being lifted off of me. It…it was my grandma. She’s like, ninety pounds, but she was lifting this big ol’ ATV off of me. This…kind of feels like a similar situation.” Veronica stared at me with that searching, analytical gaze that I’d seen several times now.

“Well, if we’re waiting, let’s move closer to the door so she can see us.” The Omni-Com atrium was a wide, circular expanse. It had a hospital feel to it, and the silence was unnerving. Veronica and I sat down on the floor and I made a few feeble attempts at small talk. She was preoccupied, to say the least. I could almost hear her synapses firing.

Episode 3.4 "Cut Off"

It had taken a good half hour of walking to confirm what we both knew deep down: the entire lobby had been fenced off from the inside. I stared helplessly at the passing clouds and Omni-Com’s well-landscaped courtyard. We were in a cage, and as far as I could tell, there was no way out. That’s when an idea hit me thirty minutes too late.

“Hey,” I began, clearing my throat, “Why don’t we just call the cops? I’ve got my cell phone with me and…”

“I already tried that, Ira,” Veronica sounded defeated, “My phone wigged out as soon as I dialed out. It’s completely dead now. The land lines are fried too.” Curiously, I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket and switched it on. Full bars, no problem.

“Hey, my phone’s fine. Look.” Veronica snatched it from my hands and quickly scanned its screen.

“You’re right…the Nebula Drive must not have…wait, did you sync your phone with Nebula?” Nebula was Omni-Com’s own online storage space. We had this whole long staff training on how to sync all of our personal electronics with Nebula, so no important information would get lost or compromised. Little secret: I never synced my stuff with Nebula. I don’t know why, but the whole process made me a bit nervous.

“Um…no?”

“Are you asking me or telling me?”

“Telling you?”

“Dammit, Ira! Did you sync your phone with Nebula? Yes or no?”

“Oh. No.” Another smile crept across Veronica’s face.

“I swear, Ira,” She began, “If Omni-Com still existed, I’d fire you. But, since it doesn’t…thanks for being such a slacker.”

“You’re welcome, I guess,” I blushed slightly, “So, will my phone work?”

“It should.” There was an uncomfortable silence as I waited for Veronica to reach the police. She was pretty, despite the fact that she was soaked in sweat and blood. There was something about her cold blue eyes that made me not want to trust her…but that made her all the more alluring. My ogling was interrupted by Veronica’s diamond-hard voice.

“Yes, I’m stuck inside the Omni-Com building. There was a security malfunction and…” She was cut off by the operator.

“You what? No, ma’am, this isn’t a prank…what? No, you don’t understand, I’m stuck…no! Wait! Dammit!” She pressed her fingers into her eyes. Her teeth were clenched tightly, and I could see the delicate skin covering her neck crease with tense veins.

“What happened, Veronica? Are they coming?” I asked softly.

“No, dammit. They’re not. Apparently, the police department received notice this morning that Omni-Com’s phones would be malfunctioning, and that calls received from the company or about the company should be disregarded. Basically, they think we’re a phone line malfunction…how in the hell did this happen?”

“But you called from my personal phone,” I began, “How can they ignore that?”

“Anything about Omni-Com isn’t getting attention. The company has hundreds of different phone lines…there was no way for the police to distinguish yours from theirs. Dammit!” At this point, the facts were right in front of me. Whatever Veronica is keeping secret has done the following terrible things today: First, it called the police and diverted their attention away from Omni-Com. Second, it called all of the company’s employees in and killed them. Third, it locked us in and won’t let us out. I may be a nerd for fearing the possibility of an AI attack, but really, what else could this be?

Episode 3.3 "Veronica"

“I’m Veronica, by the way.”

“Ira,” I replied dryly.

“C’mon,” She said quickly, “It’s safer up here, but probably not for much longer. We need to find a way out of the building.” As we wandered the perimeter of Omni-Com’s stainless steel and glass atrium, a billion questions bubbled up in my mind.

“So…could you tell me what exactly happened today?” I asked. Veronica paused as she assessed this question.

“I can’t tell you exactly what happened, no. It’s all classified. What I can tell you is that around 9:30 this morning, we experienced a security malfunction, which caused several other systems to consequently malfunction.” Her response sounded vaguely rehearsed. I waited for a few minutes to see if there was any more to Veronica’s succinct explanation. There wasn’t.

“A security malfunction?” I stammered, “A…a security malfunction is when an alarm goes off when no one is around or…or…when you get locked out of your computer…but this? I mean, most of the staff is dead and you’re covered in blood! I don’t think ‘malfunction’ quite covers it.”

“Look, Ira,” a tone of genuine concern tinged her voice, “I’ve told you all that I can. The system is malfunctioning, and we have to get out of the building. What else do you really need to know?” I pursed my lips, accepting the fact that she wasn’t going to budge on this topic.

“So, are all the floors going haywire?” I asked in an effort to change the subject.

“I…I think so. I heard screaming all the way down the stairwell. Thank God for stairs. The elevators…well, they’ve been affected by the malfunction. They’re more like coffins now.” I thought about what Veronica was saying, and suddenly I remembered an incident from last week that seemed meaningless at the time, but for some reason it resonated with today’s events. I was walking past Paul, the bleach-blond wiseass that was my floor manager, while he was having a conversation with one of the big time suits from way upstairs. The suit said something about a program called OMNOS, and Paul said something about its installation on the fifteenth floor’s computers. I decided to ask Veronica about this.

“Maybe this has something to do with OMNOS,” I said, trying to sound like I knew what I was talking about. Veronica stopped walking and looked at me. Her eyes appeared to be struggling to bore into my head in order to extract more information without having to converse with me.

“Who told you about OMNOS?” She sounded suspicious.

“Huh? Oh, nobody…I just…I overheard my floor manager talking about it last week. I heh…I thought it sounded scary. Like if an AI were to wake up and try to kill us, it’d probably be called OMNOS.” Again, Veronica’s calculating eyes were scanning my face, trying to extract some valuable piece of information out of me. It caused me to stammer, “I mean…I don’t really think that’s the case…I’m just…”

“A huge nerd?” Veronica finished my sentence for me.

“Yeah. That.” I felt my face turn red as I realized how stupid I must have sounded.

“OMNOS is just the new security program. It’s supposed to automatically adapt to and destroy any malware or virus that comes its way.” Despite the authority that had surfaced in her voice, Veronica didn’t sound quite convinced that OMNOS was entirely harmless.