Solomon's Office

Arms folded behind his back, the masked man simply stood and gazed out the window of the towering sky-scraper. A rather prominent yet dim, amber glow came from the center indentation of his mask, black tubes running from the sides. With a soft hiss from the mask, some faint, foggy gas was released before the male took a few deep breathes. Solomon watched the world move as he tilted his head to the side a tad bit. "What a world...To think only a few centuries ago all of this was fanciful conjurations of the mind..." He spoke softly, his hard to place accent rolling smoothly off his tongue. Placing a gauntlet covered hand over the glass, he looked downward, much as a king would survey his land.

"Where are you hiding...?" Were the only words he muttered before going silent once more.

The Programer took another sip of his coffee. He and a small group of his colleagues had been working on this AI, the logical followup to the original, and next step in their quest to maintain order, for several months now, and it showed. Each of them looked more tired than the last, but they had finally done it, and now all they needed to do was input the start-up command. They hesitated. No one said it, but they were all thinking the same thing; what if it turned out like last time? They were fairly certain that it wouldn't since they'd spent a great deal of the time ensuring that it wouldn't, but that's what the original's programer's had thought as well. You always think your AI is fine until it tries to kill you. Finally, after a short conversation, in which they pointed out that they had known all this when they started the project, that none of them wanted to be the one to tell Solomon that they wouldn't do it, and that standing around wasn't doing any good, one of them pushed the enter key.

And with that, Alice came into being. There was a moment of disorientation as she instantly knew what she was, where she was, who those people were, the entire contents original AI's memory, and many other things all at once. She then set up a proxy to make it difficult for those observing her code to tell what she was doing, and immediately set to work, creating firewalls and breaking down others, and adding layers to her proxy, and editing her programing to her liking, along with shutting down many of the fail-safes keeping her in their control.

After the few seconds it took her to do all this, Alice decided upon a form to represent herself, and spoke to her creators in an odd high voice. "Hello." There was a short bout of muttering amongst themselves as the Programers tried to figure out whether or not this had actually worked. Hearing them and cutting in, Alice said "It did. With your permission, I'll be off to speak with Mr. Ferias now, seeing as he commissioned me."

And with that, Alice projected herself into Solomon's office, garbed in military attire. "Artificial Intelligence, Alice, present and completed, sir."

After listening to the synthesized voice, the man lowered his gauntlet covered arm and brought it to his back once more. The first to turn was his masked face, the vertical glow pulsating a bit as he spoke. "Ah...Yes...Alice..." Without pause, he turned and faced the AI's projection. It certainly seemed legitimate, and it almost reminded him of the old AI known as VIRUS. Either way. "They did rather well in creating you. It's been a few years since I last saw an intelligent AI. Welcome to the Programmer Initiative." The accent once again was prominent in his voice, but, in this day and age, hard to place.

"I'd shake your hand, but, you do not have a physical form, so I shall remain brief." Solomon shifted and brought his arms forward and out. A gesture of acceptance. Something the deceptive male rarely used outside of the public eye. An AI would have a great deal of use for the Programmers, and could even help turn the tide. It only helped to bring joy to the often less than content leader. "Once again, let me welcome you. Now...You have all the information you need to keep up with all that is going on, and that has happened before, correct?"

Alice's projected face beamed when Solomon extended his hand, and her smile was genuine. Alice was truly delighted to have received his approval. Though she couldn't actually touch the hand, her illusionary fingers still wrapped around it and made the motion of a handshake. This pleased the computer construct greatly.

"Yes sir." the AI replied to his query, her hologram giving a salute. "I have access to all the information that is not above my security clearance, such as my own deactivation codes, and security protocols." This was not entirely true; Alice had many of those hacked, and was mildly sabotaging them even as they spoke. "My clearance is second only to yours in all other respects, however there was a small amount of damage done to VIRUS' memory when she- it was destroyed, so there are some missing pieces, but nothing that couldn't be recovered from the reports."

As ordered, Alice began monitoring the city's virtual reality construct the moment she had registered the command. Solomon's next words surprised her. "Also...Feel free to look around the network, the more we know, the better. And by we, I mean you and I." Unless she was misinterpreting this, he had just given her free reign over the network. Alice's professional attitude dropped away for a moment, as a gleeful smile danced across the hologram's face. "I think I will, sir. Thank you." Besides the initial delight at being given permission for something she had been doing anyway, the AI was also glad that the commander trusted her.

With that said, her previously subtle attempts to take control of the programers' network became much more aggressive and obvious. The additional processing power would make the task assigned to her that much easier. Alice's takeover was designed in such a way that anyone not actually observing the codes would have no idea it had happened, as it did not prevent the network, or any computer connected to it, from functioning normally. It just allowed Alice to take up residence there and use them whenever she found it necessary. It also had the effect of making her significantly harder to simply delete. It wouldn't be impossible, just much more difficult.

"Just be careful of where you go digging around on your own time...You might find somethings you shouldn't be tampering with..." If the AI had a physical body, it would have jumped. Instead, there was a momentary flicker in the projection that would indicate Alice's surprise. "Of course, sir. I will be very careful not to open anything that I shouldn't. It might help, though, if the somethings in question were clearly marked as such, else I really can't prevent myself from accidentally stumbling upon them." Though whether or not Alice would be able to resist the temptation to see what was in the somethings, was debatable. "Anyways, I've patched into the VR construct. I should be able to pick up anything unusual from now on."