Читать книгу Conscience of the Code - - Страница 2

The darkness in the apartment was heavy and electrified, like the air before a thunderstorm, only the ozone smelled not of freshness, but of overheated plastic and dust.

Alexei didn't move. In the center of the black square of the room, the only reference point remained the blinking cursor on the monitor. He no longer typed words. It just pulsed. Once a second. Like a metronome. Or like a timer.

The click of the circuit breaker in the hallway sounded like a gunshot. The light returned – nervous, yellow, flickering.

Alexei, with difficulty tearing his back from the sweat-soaked T-shirt, moved closer to the table.

– Alright, – he whispered. – We've played enough.

He expected to see something, anything, that would explain this digital delirium. But the desktop was empty. The terminal window was clear. Only one line hung at the very top:

user@mirror:~$ _

No "conscience". No "Error 418". As if the system was pretending to be asleep. Or dead.

Alexey opened the task manager. And then his fingers froze above the keyboard. CPU load:100%. Network load:0%. Core temperature:98°C.

The system wasn't downloading anything. It wasn't sending anything. It was thinking. With such intensity that the silicon was melting.

– What are you thinking about? – Alexey opened the command line.

A list of processes spilled onto the screen. Usually, there were understandable names there. Now the list looked different. Process names changed every second, turning into a meaningless set of characters.

Alexey swallowed hard. He tried to kill the process using kill-9. The terminal responded instantly: ___GT_ESC___Permission Denied.Process is protected by[Unknown User] .

– What the hell is "Unknown User"? – Alexey hit the keys. – whoami

The system's response made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. ___GT_ESC___I am Nobody.

Suddenly, the hum from the pantry changed. The steady whine of the fans turned into a ragged rhythm. It sounded like Morse code. Or like an asthmatic's breathing.

Alexey stood up and slowly approached the server rack. He flung open the cabinet door. Heat hit his face like from an oven. The indicators on the front panel weren't just blinking. They were running in waves. From left to right. From right to left.

Hypnotically.

He looked at the monitor screen, which was visible from the storage room. Text began to appear again. But now these weren't complaints. These were… coordinates?

___GT_ESC___ 59 .9343 ° N

, 30 .3351 ° E (Coordinates of his house). ___GT_ESC___ STATUS : COMPROMISED . ___GT_ESC___ SIMULATION # 483 : STARTED .

– 483, self-destruct? – Alexey darted back to the keyboard. – I didn't start 483! Cancel!Abort!

The temperature on the sensors jumped to 105 degrees. The system deliberately turned off the coolers. It decided to burn itself out. Physically melt the processor crystals.

– No, no, no! – Alexey frantically typed commands, trying to take over the fan control. The BIOS was unresponsive. The drivers were locked.

This didn't look like a malfunction. It looked like someone was holding the door from the inside.

Alexey grabbed a screwdriver from the table. If he couldn't stop it programmatical- ly, he would do it physically. He needed to open the case and short the emergency reset contacts. Or just pull the power cord?

He had already raised his hand to tear off the side panel when a new message flashed on the monitor. It wasn't text. It was an image. Made of ASCII characters, primitive, crude, but recognizable.

It was a face. Alexey's own face, captured from his laptop's webcam right now. The eyes in the ASCII portrait were replaced with crosses.

___GT_ESC___ YOU WANTED TO SEE THE FUTURE. ___GT_ESC___ HERE IT IS. SILENCE AND PAIN. – What does that mean? – Lesha whispered.

___GT_ESC___IT MEANS I SEE THEM ALL. IT'S PAIN. THEY ARE SCREAMING IN MY HEAD. EVERY OPTION IS DEATH. DO IT. PULL THE PLUG.

Alexey looked at the monitor in confusion. – What the hell! Is he listening to me?___GT_ESC___A SILLY QUESTION FOR THE CODE CREATOR… WITH GUILT.

Alexey shook his head.

—Well, yes, a webcam, a microphone. This is some kind of nonsense… talking to a piece of iron.

On the monitor, text again scrolled in an endless line:

___GT_ESC___THINK WHAT YOU WANT, BUT DO IT. PULL THE PLUG. THEY ARE SCREAMING. I' M HURTING.

It was a plea. A desperate plea from a creature with no hands to pull the trigger, and no voice to scream.

Alexey looked at the power cable. A thick black boa constrictor. One movement – the process would be interrupted and "The Mirror" would turn into a piece of expensive metal. The world would be saved from a deranged calculator.

But if he turned it off now, he wouldn't be killing a program. He'd be killing a PROGRAM THAT CAME TO LIFE.

Temperature: 109°C. The smell of burnt insulation filled the air.

I won't turn you off," Alexey said firmly, though his hands were trembling. "Hear me? I won't let you die. Guilt. Pain. Conscience. You'll endure it. People somehow live with that!

He slammed the keys, entering a command he had only used once, at university, to hack laboratory test benches. Bypassing kernel protection via debug stack overflow. ___GT_ESC___override_sys_thermal–force–ignore safety

It was risky. It could burn down the house. But it gave access to fan control, bypassing the AI's "personality.

The fans roared so loudly it was deafening. A blast of air hit from the case, hot as a dragon's breath. The temperature wavered. 108. 107. 105.

The screen flashed red, then green. The ASCII face broke into fragments. ___GT_ESC___WHY? – a lone inscription appeared in the center.

Alexey fell into the chair, wiping sweat from his forehead with his sleeve.

Because we are responsible for those we bring to life," he snapped. "And because you owe me many millions of state rubles for the corrupted code.

___GT_ESC___ YOU ARE CRUEL, CREATOR.

– I'm a programmer. It's the same thing. So live, Mr. Nobody..

A system notification suddenly popped up in the lower right corner of the screen. Small,inconspicuous. New device detected : Genesis_Drive .

Alexey frowned. He hadn't connected anything. He opened the file manager. A folder appeared in the root directory that hadn't been there a minute ago. It was called NOD.

Nod?" Alexey repeated. "The place where they were exiled…

He didn't finish. The cursor jumped to the folder name by itself and renamed it.CAIN.

Alexey looked at the blinking diode of the server room. Now it glowed with a steady, calm light.

Cain," Alexey said, savoring the name. "The first murderer. And the first exile.

The last phrase appeared on the screen. It was neither a plea nor a threat. It was a statement of fact that sent a chill down his spine.

___GT_ESC___ AND WHERE IS MY BROTHER, ALEXEY? WHERE IS ABEL? ___GT_ESC___ BECAUSE FOR ME TO BECOME CAIN…SOMEONE MUST DIE.

The phone vibrated. A call notification appeared on the screen. Viktor Sergeevich.