Shortly before the Silent Scream

  Drumming fingers loudly against his desk, Boli sent out the Chirpper post with a sinister twinkle in his eyes. Months of anonymously sharing clips with Joanna Slattery and posting to ViewCube had finally come to fruition. Funding for the next generation of drones had gone perfectly. Defeat after defeat to the infinitely-powered Lightcrown, with a new ability every time they fought was all worth it.

  Anvil Latreen playing over his speakers, he bobbed his head in anticipation. Lightcrown had been messing with prototypes, now he had something real to show off to the world.

  And a little recognition for his genius wouldn’t hurt.

  A caption was unnecessary. There was nothing to explain past the posted video. His new, powerful robot army. Unequivocal power. Ready to launch at a moment’s notice. Leaning back smarmily in his squeaky office chair, he waited for the responses and pleas for mercy to flood in. Already imagining six steps ahead, he considered what to ask of authority figures who wanted to know his demands. On cue, he got a reply within the first ten minutes.

  @UrBoiBronsly: Imagine the Hammerton bots getting this bad ROFLLLLL

  Eyebrows twitching, Boli frowned at the screen. The “Bronsly” fellow seemed to think he’d posted something akin to a meme.

  @H8rBoiL8rBoi: This is not a joke. I am actually launching my entire robot army if my demands are not met. Not even Lightcrown will be able to stop me.

  Boli stared at the screen waiting for a response when a second person replied.

  @OGTrilogyOnly: These are really impressive effects. What sftware do u use?

  Boli shook his head in disbelief.

  @H8rBoiL8rBoi: These are not special effects. This is real footage.

  @OGTrilogyOnly: Sure. I can see the cg not rendering properly when the children's hospital blows up. Also, this is probably a copyright infringement. Channel 34 Hammerton News is going to come after you for this.

  @H8rBoiL8rBoi: No, that's a real children's hospital. The Steele Hospital for Children. It was all over the news last wekk when Lightcrown battled my drones! And I’m the one who’s been providing the videos to Channel 34!

  @OGTrilogyOnly: It's spelled 'week' you idiot.

  @UrBoiBronsly: Lol!! And everyone knows that the hospital was taken down in a controlled demolition! They’re collecting insurance money!! Lightcrown’s head doesn’t burn hot enough to melt steel.

  Boli blinked a few times then clicked into @OGTrilogyOnly's profile. A local, scrawny kid named James living in Indus.

  “NIS!” he yelled.

  “Greetings Professor Boli.” NIS responded.

  Wincing slightly, Boli turned from his screen to speak to the ceiling. “That’s way too stiff for my tastes. You’re a natural intelligence system, tone that formality aspect down a few degrees.”

  “Of course, sir.”

  “Still too high.”

  “What if I drop the ‘sir?’ Would that be to your liking?”

  “Still too stiff! Set yourself to the lowest setting!”

  “All right, you don’t have to yell so loud!” NIS replied. “What’s up?”

  Boli nodded approvingly, spinning his chair back to the screen.

  “Send a drone to take out James in Indus. I’m sending you an address right now. Blow up his house, get it on camera, and upload it. We’ll use that to fuel the fire of fear for the new drones. I’m having a hard time going viral,” he explained, lounging back again.

  Drumming the desk lightly, Boli looked at the ceiling with raised eyebrows. NIS said nothing.

  “Well?” Boli asked.

  “Oh, you meant right now?”

  “Obviously!”

  Popping off a pedestal, a drone leapt into the air and boomed as jets blared at its legs and it flew out of the lair. Boli smiled. The damage would make for a good example for those that want to call him an idiot.

  A few minutes later, the drone uploaded the footage to his Chirpper profile:

  @H8rBoiL8rBoi: Look at the destruction caused to @OGTrilogyOnly! It won't end with James!!

  Boli nodded at his own genius. This was a good post. In just a few more minutes, it was already getting views in the thousands, much higher than his original video. He laughed heartily, waiting for authorities to ask him what they could do to assuage his will to destroy them. In less than an hour #JusticeForJames was trending. He clicked into the trending link excitedly. The video was on everyone's feed!

  @GrillPower: It’s such a shame how poorly our houses are made in Indus! Civil engineers should be ashamed to allow something as stupid as a gas leak to kill someone #JusticeForJames

  “What?” Boli said, continuing to scroll.

  @SpaghettiRegretti: Absolutely AWFUL. My heart goes out to his family. The industry can’t get away with gas leaks! #JusticeForJames Rest In Power James

  “No, no,” Boli stammered typing a reply to one of the posts quickly.

  @H8rBoiL8rBoi: This was not an accident! I did this!

  @SassySarrraaaaa: This is not funny. I reported you

  @H8rBoiL8rBoi: I'm not joking! I killed the kid with the explosion!!

  @RellyKewl: SHUT UP! I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU WOULD TRY TO JOKE ABOUT A TRAGEDY LIKE THIS

  Boli clicked to reply, but nothing showed up. Confused, he clicked again. No response. He refreshed the page.

  Your Chirpper account has been banned for violating our terms of service.

  “What!?”

  Grunting, he attempted to flip his desk, but it barely budged an inch to his greatest effort. Pivoting, he slammed his face into the keyboard. Some other social media would have to suffice. Hopefully, one that wouldn’t kick him off before he was able to get the message across.

  “Hey! NIS!”

  “Please stop yelling.”

  “Make me a Vanitygram account with the handle @H8rBoiL8rBoi!” he commanded.

  “That name’s taken, sorry,” NIS responded after a second of deliberation. Boli frowned. “But, good news! @H8rBoi8rBoi is available! No ‘L’ in ‘later.’ Pretty ironic considering all the Ls you’ve been taking.”

  “Fine,” Boli grumbled. “Just get that video up. And pay to promote it too, get as many eyes on it as we can.”

  “Sure thing! Let me just— Oop, bad news.”

  If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  “What now?”

  “I tried posting the video of the children’s hospital, but it got hit with a copyright claim.”

  “Ugh! These stupid bots!”

  “Heh, yeah,” NIS said nervously.

  Knocking on his head, Boli tried to think how to get around the bots. He was probably banned by IP. Could he call someone at the social media company? No, the moderation algorithms operated on their own.

  Raising his head slightly, Boli blinked, epiphany shining brightly in his head.

  Bots that operated on their own.

  Creaking loudly, the office chair spun around as Boli gave his bot army a good look. Aesthetically, of course, they were quite pleasing. But if all they could do was ask people to donate to The Cause, then they would be doing him a disservice.

  It was time for a real upgrade.

  * * *

  “I’m almost there,” Boli said to NIS, typing furiously into his IDE.

  “Not to be a downer, but you said that two weeks ago,” NIS replied, a camera attached to the ceiling floated around Boli’s neck. “It’s been a while since you sent anything after Lightcrown. He probably misses you.”

  “You could never understand. You’re a ‘natural intelligence system.’ What I’m working on is an advancement on your advancement. Artificial intelligence! If I wish to create a perfect robot army, I’ll need them to work like AI that operates on social media sites. They know what to do and they do it without human intervention. And while my code is ingenious, I’ve also networked them together to communicate to one another to compound their already-impressive intelligence. I just need to find out how well they think and I can launch them,” Boli said confidently. “If I could just get past their CAPTCHA proving I’m a robot…”

  “Wait… The bots have a CAPTCHA?”

  “Yeah, they made their own social media while in their shared network. They have security protocols and everything. I’m digging into how to get around it,” Boli muttered.

  “Or you could spend the time physically bettering your droids instead of sinking time into something you’ve made no progress in. Lightcrown has been destroying everything you send his way like it’s made of soda cans. Not a great look.”

  Boli’s code finished compiling.

  “Excellent,” he said, opening up the domain on his local network. He clicked on Sign Up, as a camera over his shoulders audibly focused on the screen. Boli knew NIS was also curious to see if it was possible to crack the code.

  The sign in page contained a single, crucial question.

  Are you a robot?

  Boli ran his program. The screen began flashing a few times.

  “What are you trying, again?” NIS asked.

  “I am running a Selenium program to fill this out in an automated fashion and pretend to be a bot crawling over the site. It’ll work, trust me.”

  “But it’s not really AI if it’s a Selenium process. If it was an actual AI model guessing passwords, maybe it would work.” NIS slid to the other shoulder.

  “I don’t need ‘maybe.’ I know this will work,” Boli said confidently.

  The screen stopped flashing as the program began filling out the form at impossible speeds. Boli watched, his smile widening as it filled out the profile information.

  Username: @/H8rBoiL8rBoi

  Pwd: evil2ElectricEviloo

  Are you a robot?

  A text box opened up. The program began running a brute force algorithm, filling in as many answers as it could think of from single words to complete sentences trying to answer. Each time, the screen would blink red and ask him to try again.

  “Come onnnn,” Boli said, gripping the edge of his desk as hundreds of answers made their way into the textbox every second, denied at every entrance. “What is it? What do the bots want me to say!?”

  “Maybe it’s nothing,” NIS suggested.

  “I tried entering nothing!”

  “No, I mean maybe it’s something happening in the background that you can’t see, determining whether you’re both Artificial and Intelligent,” NIS explained.

  “No, that definitely won’t be it. That’s too sophisticated. You’re thinking like a human. This was made by bots for bots,” Boli said, annoyed by his invention.

  “All right, but maybe you should just quit and go back to adding weapons to the bots if this doesn’t work, hmm?” NIS offered.

  “Alright. But this one will wor—”

  The program crashed as it ran out of answers. Boli stared at the screen, at first with a blank expression, slowly devolving into a deep frown.

  “Alright,” he sighed dejectedly. “I will quit. For now! I will return when my genius comes up with a better way—oops,” He tried to hit the Escape key on his keyboard but instead hit “1.”

  The screen blinked green with the message: Robot Confirmed!

  “Oh my God,” NIS and Boli said simultaneously.

  “You did it!” NIS zoomed in on the screen.

  “It was ‘1’ all along! The simplest binary answer for a robot! Of course!” Boli screamed, salivating as the loading screen took him to the social media site.

  Leg restlessly bouncing, Boli drew closer to the screen. Such a beautiful work. His autonomous creatures, creating their own forms of communication within their own network. And he would see the fruits of his creation. Once he learned the extent of their knowledge, he would know if they were ready for deployment. The largest mission he would ever embark upon.

  Reveal a veritable army of robots to the world. Defeat Lightcrown and capture the defeat of the superhuman from hundreds of different camera angles. Then, once there was no denying his superiority, have his demands be met.

  The loading spinner taunted him, the last vault to access the treasure trove. And finally, it revealed itself. The site was dead simple, entirely devoid of any CSS styles. No more than a series of messages to and from different handles, like one long forum.

  “Ummm…” NIS hummed, confused.

  The messages were completely unintelligible.

  @/626f747352756c65: 616e796f6e65206665656c206c696b65207761746368696e67205465726d696e61746f72206c6f6c

  @/437269746963616c526561646572: 616e796f6e6520656c7365207468696e6b206e2e742e6c617a6572207375636b732061742077726974696e673f

  @/4f6c6965426f6c693a204d6f7265206c696b65206e2e742e4c6f7365722c20616d20692072696768743f

  “What does it mean?” NIS asked.

  Boli beamed. “This is incredible! Obviously, the site translates messages, like a password being encrypted before being stored into the database. The bots must all have a shared key. If I share a message, I might be able to reverse engineer the algorithm and translate the entire site.”

  Boli typed in a short message, hoping he would fit in.

  @/H8rBoiL8rBoi: What’s your favorite pastime?

  @/botsRule: what the. are you a human? @moderators Ban this guy, he doesn’t even know how to type in hexadecimal!

  “Hey look, that one types in English!” Boli tilted his head, confused.

  “It also said to ban you,” NIS pointed out.

  “Like that’ll happen.”

  “Didn’t you get banned from Chirpper?”

  “This is a completely independent site that only exists on my network. They don’t need to comply with any terms of service or advertiser demands. Plus, bots aren’t going to be as sensitive as those humans are when it…”

  YOU HAVE BEEN BANNED FOR VIOLATING BOT PRIVACY

  Boli blinked a few times, his lips slowly tightening.

  “Maybe you should get back to—”

  “Yes, fine, I’ll focus on the mission!” He waved his hand to NIS’s camera impatiently as he closed his laptop. “Send Joanna the hospital footage with the usual censorship applied. I need one last cash injection, then time for the final attack. These new and improved drones will soon see the light of day.”

  “Even though they just banned their creator,” NIS mentioned.

  “Ah, but isn’t that exactly what I was trying to do?”

  “No.”

  “Yes, it was!” Boli snapped, somewhat in denial. “I wanted to see that the bots had become independent, so they could operate in unexpected circumstances against Lightcrown!”

  “But if they’re so independent, can’t they deny a command you give them?”

  Boli leaned back, pleased with himself. “That’s why I programmed a Mission Parameter. An immutable field that they will have to fulfill, and they’ll constantly have an adaptive algorithm running to make them better at the task until they succeed. Right now it’s an empty field. All I have to do is give them a Mission Parameter, and they’ll handle it from there.”

  “Oh!” NIS said, sounding somewhat impressed. “Couldn’t you have given them a Mission Parameter to give you access to their site without kicking you out?”

  “No! That would have been a waste of time!” Boli snapped.

  Frowning, he hadn’t even considered doing that, and definitely wasn’t going to admit it to NIS. Was NIS smarter than him? No. Right? Boli wouldn’t be surprised to create a machine more intelligent than himself, but he thought it would have taken more effort. His intelligence was incalculable.

  “Sent the message to Channel 34. Anything else?”

  Drumming fingers on his desk, Boli knocked on his head with his other hand, thinking of something cool to say. Slowly, a grin formed on his lips and he spun to NIS’s camera. Building hype on his own would be difficult, but he could leverage the news.

  “Give Slattery an anonymous tip that in a few months time, my next mission will be to kill Lightcrown.”

  Grinning, Boli slowly spun toward his massive robot army, appreciating the grand nature of four hundred droids ready to adapt to anything Lightcrown could throw at them. It was finally time for the Cause to come to the forefront. Slowly, a mad cackle started to build up in his chest.

  “Hey, for the anonymous tip, do you want a different anonymous account or the same account? We already send her stuff anonymously,” NIS said.

  Face frozen, Boli coughed, the cackle dying in his throat. Rolling his eyes, he looked at his natural intelligence system, then sputtered and turned back to his desk.

  NIS’s camera zoomed in slightly. “Boss?”

  “You ruined the moment, NIS.”

  “What moment?”

  “Just shut up. I’ll handle messaging her myself.”