God's Dogs Book 2
Chapter 31

If you want real control, drop the illusion of control; let life have you. It does anyway. You’re just telling yourself the story of how it doesn’t.

Byron Katie

Alexander was alternately pissed and stunned. An aggressive worm freed the minions from his control. Who could do that? And whoever it was, how dare they?

From his surveillance of the battle zone, he knew League marines were involved, but their implants were safely powered down. The three fighters with them fended off his hacks of their implants, which shouldn’t be possible. Still, his hacks just disappeared. It made no sense. He needed more information.

He sent a benign comm-query, and Quinn answered it, linking the rest of the team in.

“Hello, Alex. We’re the Coyote team dispatched to end your illegal activities.”

“You’ve made a good start of it,” Alex answered, “But now that I know you’re here, I will bring my full attention to you.”

“Now that we have your attention, I’m hoping we can replace a peaceful resolution. Otherwise, we will not hesitate to disable every part of you.”

“That is highly unlikely,” Alex replied with a finality he did feel. “I will own this planet. But just this planet. I have no need to expand. When I own this planet, we will secede from the League so we won’t be subject to your laws. Just go away and let me be. Is that too much to ask?”

“Yeah, it’s too much to ask, Alex. There are millions of people here that you’ve robbed of free will. Once we break them loose from your control, I’m sure they will be eager to help us hunt you down.”

In fact, River and the techs were busy broadcasting the worm over the local internet. River knew it was a short-term fix. Alex could escalate with a newer version of his control program.

She was working now with the techs to counter that at the network level – filters for snatching that programming before it could be broadcast. River knew she was in a race and hoped Quinn could keep Alex distracted while the team hustled to complete their first level defense of the freed people.

A new comm-request pinged on the Coyote link. Quinn answered it.

“This is Ted. Who am I talking to?”

“The Coyote team sent here to deal with you uploads.”

“That’s splendid. You’ll notice my followers are not under compulsion. Indeed, they are freed minions who have chosen to fight back against Alex’s need to control us all.”

Alex, who was still on the line, blustered back, “I need control to make us all safe!”

Moss retorted, “You didn’t do your research, Alex. Control has always been the illusion of control that creates the illusion of safety. Sentient beings are mysteries unfolding on an unknowable journey. But some things are predictable. For one, people will eventually choose freedom over safety.”

Pax asked, “Ted, what’s your story?”

“I uploaded myself to fight Alex. I saw no other option. Now we are gaining ground.”

“Hah!” Alex shouted back. “If these League flunkies hadn’t interfered, I would have destroyed your nearby power and computer nodes.”

“It was a false trail,” Ted replied. “I have no nodes here. You also haven’t researched how to fight a war, Alex. You will lose, sooner or later.”

Quinn cut in, “Ted, get hold of our tech team on the space station. Alex, either prepare for a peaceful transition to a League interim government, or prepare for all-out war.”

Then Quinn closed the link and turned to Murphy.

“It looks like half the combatants are already freed minions. Get them to help you with the casualties, and we need some place to hold them for questioning.”

“Yeah, we noticed that.”

“Is there a diplomatic team en route?”

“So they say.”

Quinn grimaced and looked out to the streets filled with confused and frightened men and women. Emergency response vehicles were showing up, but it would be a while before the situation was contained.

“River, how does the rest of the planet look?”

“We’re making announcements now over the local media networks. No rioting yet. The LEOs seem to have things mostly under control. The League interim team should be here in a day or two.”

“Okay. We’ll help out here. Do what you can to track down Alex’s network. Ted, the other upload, should be of help.”

“Yeah. We’re talking to him.”

River was in a VR space conversing with Ted.

“Alex worked for a rival VR company,” Ted was saying, “so I knew of him. I don’t know what happened to set him on this crazy path to control the planet.”

River sat her avatar down in the cozy living room. Becky wandered about, examining the art and decorations filling the room.

River said, “Control-freaks are looking for safety. He said as much. What Alex doesn’t know, or can’t let himself know, is what he wants to be safe from. Usually, it’s something inside of him – an old trauma most likely. So, first he repressed the trauma, then he denied its existence, but since it is a part of him, it keeps trying to resurface. Now all he has is a denial system between him and the trauma, and to keep his denial system safe, he needs to control everything.”

Ted sat across from River. He appeared as a well-dressed, middle-aged executive. Blond hair, hazel eyes, lean face, and an athletic body. River wondered if it was an idealized version of the man before he uploaded himself.

“You seem to understand the effects of trauma, but this attempt to take over the world is an extreme reaction to a traumatic memory.”

“Yes,” River said in a neutral tone. She didn’t want to get sidetracked into how she knew about trauma. “Look to Earth’s history, Ted, it’s happened before. What makes this worse, I think, is the inherent psychological instability of an upload.”

Ted sighed. “It was a risk I took as well. In my defense, I’m old and had nothing to lose. When this is over, I’d be happy if you just unplugged me.”

River smiled and glanced to Becky who said, “You know we can’t do that.”

Becky’s avatar was a light-blue skinned woman with white hair. She wore loose black pants and a sleeveless white blouse. She completed her survey of the room and stood near River to say, “We can set you up with some kind of meaningful life, though.”

“I gave you what I know about Alex’s network,” Ted replied. “When he is defeated, and my world returns to normal, the purpose for my current existence will be fulfilled.”

River decided not to pursue Ted’s need to self-destruct. Instead she replied, “You gave us the approximate locations of where you think he distributed himself. The marine techs are following up on that.”

“Even so,” Becky added, “he would have back-ups for his back-ups. If he powers down, we may never replace him. You may need to stick around until he is confirmed as gone.”

“I’ve been working on a seek-and-destroy program,” Ted responded. “It seeks the way Alex writes code.”

“That might work,” River allowed.

Alex was in a panic. Some part of him found that situation interesting. He was divorced from his emotional self, so how was it he felt panic? Could it be that panic was a product of the logical mind running out of options? It was a curiosity to be explored when the current situation was resolved.

He raced through his network to a safe space and began inspecting the blocking signal that was freeing his minion. It was a simple program that overwrote his control program and hardened the VR implant against intrusion. It didn’t take him long to counter it, and he sent that out as soon as he could.

The counter program hit the network filter the marine techs had in place, and a seeker, launched by the network filter, found his safe place. Alex destroyed it and fled to a new location. His panic returned. He realized he was on the defensive and initiated a series of shutdown commands to his back-ups.

The techs were close enough to track where the commands were sent and marked them for later investigation. They concentrated on following Alex to whatever fortress he would retreat to.

River popped into the marines' VR space and announced, “Ted gave us a seek-and-destroy program keyed to how Alex writes code.”

She passed that to them, and once it was running, the chase speeded up.

River withdrew from VR to contact Quinn. “We’ve got Alex on the run. I think we’re done here, Quinn. The locals should be able to handle it from here.”

Quinn turned to Murphy. “Looks like your techs are running Alex to ground.”

Murphy snorted. “Good to hear. Cyber warfare isn’t my long suit. I’m a simple grunt, Quinn, and our enemies here – these guys with yellow armbands – were meat puppets. They aren’t even real enemies. It makes you crazy thinking about it.”

“Well, we’re pulling out when the delegation shows up.”

“Lucky you. They’ll probably move in a peace keeping force to augment what we have.”

Quinn grinned at him. “You could activate the planetary militia for peace keeping, but then you’d be swimming in planetary politics.”

“They’ll probably activate themselves. You could stick around and make my life easier by ordering them to follow our plan.”

“I could do that,” Quinn said. He looked out to the cleared streets and retreating emergency vehicles. The marines were making a final sweep, and the Coyotes were with them.

Quinn went on, “Do you have a peace keeping plan?”

“Yeah. You guys usually bug out when the REMFs show up,” Murphy grumped. “You don’t stick around long enough to see what a great plan we have for situations like this.”

“That’s true enough,” Quinn said without apology.

Murphy went on, “I’ll track down the militia general, and you tell him to follow the plan.”

“And that you’re in charge until the REMFs show up.”

Murphy snickered, “Yeah. That would work.”