The Icarus Genesis

**The Icarus Genesis** is a book written by Jonas Waever.

## Text

### Page 1

Without a sound and with a blank expression on his face, Ralph plugged his interface into the mainframe. The others were gathered around the console, sending each other and the equipment nervous looks. Katelin placed her hand on Ralph's shoulder as Peter connected the life support equipment to the main servers and turned on the vital sign monitors. After a few minutes, everything was set.
Ralph sat there for a while, speechless, without moving a muscle, the centre of the small island of light created by the computer monitors and surrounded by the darkness filling the laboratories. Peter stood next to him, arms crossed, a concerned expression on his face. Daniel, behind Ralph's chair, rubbed his bearded chin, crossed his arms, looked worriedly at Kate, let his arms drop and hang limply down his sides, switched his weight, switched it again, coughed slightly, put his left arm in the pocket of his labcoat, wiped the sweat from his forehead and finally decided to keep both his hands in his pockets. His eyes, however, didn't stop darting from face to face.
*Ralph had decided to sacrifice himself for the team. That was how he perceived his current situation. The fear of his friends was almost a tangible thing. He could feel it hanging in the room, pressing down on him. Icarus had been his life. The project had taken up every hour of his day, filling even his free time with thoughts and ideas for how to improve the program. Even though Peter was officially the leader of the team, Ralph felt like Icarus was his baby. He had programmed the personality modules, so in a way he had raised the AI. That was also why he felt responsible for what happened. Daniel and Susan had assured Peter that Ralph had done his job well, and Peter never even questioned the explanation that an outside influence had somehow interfered with the program and corrupted the personality modules, but Ralph still felt that it was HIS responsibility because HIS work had been messed up. And he'd be damned if he wasn't going to straighten it back out or die trying.*"

### Page 2

\*Click\*
Ralph let his hand fall to the table where it rested as the system cleared him for access. Peter breathed a sigh of relief, Daniel looked at him nervously but Kate's eyes didn't move an inch from the vital signs monitor. She took great comfort in the steady beeps from Ralph's heartbeats. He was a very dear friend of hers, though it could never go beyond that. They were both married to other people, and they couldn't continue to cooperate professionally if they were romantically involved. A strong bond had grown between them, but none of them had ever let it grow beyond that, and none of them were un-happy with that.
*The readouts on the mainframe monitors revealed that Ralph was searching. He was trying to locate the Icarus subroutines, which had been programmed with a state-of-the-art virtual reality interface to allow for easier access and editing. Icarus contained more than a million subroutines, databases and functions, but in the little virtual reality world they'd created for the AI, they could more easily find anything they needed and edit it to upgrade or fix it.*"

### Page 3

So far, however... nothing seemed to be happening. Ralph was looking, and Ralph was finding nothing. Nothing? None of the subroutines seemed to be where they should be. Where was Icarus? Where had he gone?
There was a flicker. It was almost inconceivable. They all saw it, but only Peter noticed it. He moved over to one of the other consoles and brought up the status screen of the /~tjx.64 subfolder. Numbers were scrolling across the screen faster than he could follow with his eyes. "What are you getting?" Daniel asked with a trembling voice. "I... I'm not sure." But that wasn't entirely true. In fact Peter was quite certain he was looking at Icarus. But what was it doing? Then he caught the words "life support" scrolling across the screen. His eyes widened.
*"It looks like it's running... no, this can't be!" Disbelief was evident in Peter's voice as he began typing like mad. "What's happening? What are you doing, Peter?" Kate got up and almost jumped over to him. She studied the monitor for a few seconds, after which she let out a gasp of horror. "It's running some subroutines on his brain, isn't it? It gained access to his brain? How's this possible!?" She almost cried. Peter could only shake his head in response. How could he possibly know? The AI had apparently been creating its own subroutines with data from other servers in the complex, and now it had forced entry into Ralph's mind through the life support devices. By all accounts, there should be no way this would be possible of course, but that didn't seem to stop Icarus.*"

### Page 4

*In the observation room above them, Walton Simons turned around and faced the holocom. "The experiment was a success. You'll be pleased to know it reacts with surprising cunning, and we've been sure to get rid of any moral codes which could prove inhibiting to our plans. As opposed to our previous project, the new AI will also be completely loyal thanks to a few alterations to the control program, and it's ready to be released at your will." Simons halted the recording and pressed the "Send" button, and then he calmly left the room turning the lights off behind him.*"

## Links

* https://web.archive.org/web/20120610234539/http://forums.gamespy.com/the\_fan\_fic\_forum/b49429/14652689/p1/?3