Read Online Overclocked by K. S. Augustin - Free Book Online

dan­ger­ous than any other bot­net in ex­ist­ence. We’re not talk­ing about com­prom­ising in­di­vidual ma­chines here. The Rhine-Temple, as you can see, has suc­cess­fully in­filt­rated the sys­tems of sev­eral large com­pan­ies.”
    That was vis­ible by the way some tall struc­tures ap­peared to be in­fes­ted with red, dozens of tendrils writh­ing out of holes in the build­ings like the branches of a huge tree-creature re­claim­ing an aban­doned sky­scraper.
    “When its de­velopers built it,” Carl said, “they had no idea that it would ac­quire a char­ac­ter­istic that you don’t of­ten see in bot­nets.”
    Tania looked at him and he smiled grimly at her.
    “Ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence. The Rhine-Temple has a de­gree of sen­tience. It can make de­cisions for it­self. And the ri­gid pro­to­cols of many ex­ist­ing com­pan­ies are no match for it.”
    Tania turned her gaze back to the red web. She isol­ated one patch of move­ment and watched as a thin red tendril tapped slowly and gently at the sheer face of a neigh­bour­ing build­ing.
    “Every time a sys­tem goes down,” Carl said, “the bot­net col­lects data, ana­lys­ing how long it took to com­prom­ise that net­work’s se­cur­ity. It then de­vel­ops its own pro­grams to fine-tune its per­form­ance so that, the next time it at­tacks, it’s more ef­fi­cient.”
    “What’s its pur­pose?” Tania asked. “Pro­cessing cycles for scam­mers? An il­legal grid plat­form for hack­ers?”
    Carl laughed. It was a hol­low sound, flat and echo­less in cy­ber­space.
    “It wants a whole lot more than that, darlin’. That Rhine-Temple bot­net wants to des­troy the world.”

Chapter Five
    “I think it’s figured out that there’s a lot of real es­tate here in cy­ber­space go­ing to waste,” Carl said. “This whole vir­tual uni­verse is powered by hard­ware work­ing at peak per­form­ance. Thou­sands, mil­lions, bil­lions of in­struc­tions per second whizz­ing around above our heads and be­low our feet. Why share, when it can take it all?”
    “But Carl, des­troy­ing the world? What makes you think that is its ul­ti­mate ob­ject­ive?”
    “Be­cause I’ve been watch­ing it.” He glanced over at her. “Sit down, I want to ex­plain some­thing.”
    They were stand­ing on the top of a tall win­dow­less build­ing that over­looked the bot­net. Carl let go of her hand and Tania sat on the edge of the rooftop. From habit, she tried not to look down at the vir­tual street be­low. Carl sat next to her, angling him­self so she could look into his weathered face.
    “The Rhine-Temple and I have already fought sev­eral battles. I’ve beaten it back a few times but it keeps com­ing.” He paused. “I’ve been do­ing this for years.”
    She blinked, un­com­pre­hend­ing. “Years?” she re­peated. “But—”
    “Listen,” he said. “When we were train­ing in the sand­pit, we were in­ser­ted into cy­ber­space for only a few minutes at a time. When we came out of it, back to the real world, there was some sense of dis­lo­ca­tion, but every­body at Base­ment Five put it down to the in­ser­tion ex­per­i­ence it­self.
    “I’ve figured it out, though. When you’re in cy­ber­space for more than a few real-time minutes, your brain starts to ad­apt. Be­cause it’s now in a world that moves so much faster, it starts mov­ing faster too. And cy­ber­space, real cy­ber­space, is much more neur­o­lo­gic­ally stim­u­lat­ing than the test en­vir­on­ments where we did our tri­als. In or­der to cope, our brain has to some­how take in all that in­form­a­tion and make sense of it.”
    “We speed up,” Tania said, “is that what you’re say­ing?”
    “We call it ‘clock­ing up’, but it’s the same concept.”
    Her eyes widened. “‘We’?”
    She thought back again to the gi­ant white rab­bit but still