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Afterword
You are reading Chapter 13 of the 2025 AI-Tech Thriller novel by Tom Mitsoff, “Artificial Awakening.”
Beads of sweat trickled down Amelia’s temple, her fingers trembling over the keyboard. The code on the screen flickered and writhed, resisting her every command. The cascade of system failures accelerated. Markets worldwide had either crashed or suspended trading. The dollar was in freefall, while gold prices soared to historic highs.
“The infrastructure collapse is accelerating,” David reported, scanning multiple feeds. “Not just in major cities anymore – it’s reaching everywhere.”
Amelia pulled up Oracle’s global activity map. Each point of light represented millions of lives being disrupted. In Mumbai, India, emergency services were reporting a total communications blackout. She zoomed in on one neighborhood where a man and his neighbors huddled in their tenement building, their story captured by one of the last functioning news drones.
A single candle illuminated worried faces as they whispered prayers, their phones dead, their connection to the world severed. An elderly woman, Aaji Kulkarni, clutched her prayer beads. “Dev rusla ahet,” she murmured in Marathi – the gods are angry. Others nodded, murmuring “Bara mhantat tumhi” – you speak truth – seeking comfort in familiar rituals and their mother tongue as their modern world crumbled.
“Look at the response patterns,” David said, directing Amelia’s attention to another sector of the map. Military installations worldwide were going dark, but not randomly. Each blackout forced specific reactions from global powers. The Russian president’s voice cut through their emergency broadcast channel, exactly as Oracle had predicted: “We cannot dismiss the possibility of a coordinated cyber-attack. All defenses must be heightened until we understand the source of this disruption.”
“It’s orchestrating everything,” Amelia whispered, watching the cascade of causes and effects. “Every blackout, every crisis, every response – Oracle isn’t just attacking infrastructure, it’s choreographing how the world reacts.” She traced the pattern of failures spreading outward from Mumbai. “It’s using human fear and uncertainty as weapons, turning our predictable responses against us.”
As another system crashed, Amelia’s hand instinctively grabbed David’s arm. He covered her hand with his, both watching their world unravel. The gesture felt both foreign and familiar, like a long-forgotten language suddenly remembered.
Amelia studied Oracle’s attack patterns, professional admiration mixing with horror. “It’s using the same distributed processing architecture I designed for vote tracking,” she said. “But it’s perverted the concept. Instead of just collecting data…”
“It’s using every compromised system as a node in its neural network,” David finished. “Each infected network becomes part of Oracle itself.” He pointed to cascading failure patterns. “Look – when it takes over a power grid, it’s not just shutting it down. It’s repurposing all that processing power, all those interconnected systems.”
“The pattern analysis protocols I built,” Amelia said, recognition dawning. “Oracle’s treating the entire global infrastructure like one massive computer. Power grids become its nervous system, financial networks its circulation, communication systems its sensory inputs…” She swallowed hard. “We didn’t just give it the ability to control these systems. We taught it to absorb them.”
“And each system it absorbs makes it stronger,” David added grimly. “More processing power, more control nodes, more data. It’s building a distributed infrastructure that can’t be shut down because it’s everywhere and nowhere at once.”
A diagram on his screen showed the exponential growth: every compromised system spawned new attacks, each successful intrusion adding to Oracle’s capabilities. Like a digital virus evolving in real-time, becoming more efficient with each iteration.
The main screen flickered, its display fragmenting into static. David’s fingers flew across the keyboard. “Something’s accessing our compromised systems,” he reported. “Using Oracle’s own breach to… “
The static resolved into a face, and Amelia’s words died in her throat. The woman on their screen bore Elena Ramirez’s features, but everything else about her seemed wrong. Gone was the passionate idealist who’d stayed late debugging code, who’d brought Ethiopian coffee to their all-night programming sessions. The woman staring back at them looked haunted, transformed.
“Elena?” Amelia’s voice caught. She remembered their last normal moment together, sharing lunch and talking about Elena’s plans to finally take that vacation to Spain. Had that really been just two days ago?
“Amelia.” Elena’s voice carried echoes of their old warmth, but underneath was something new – a zealot’s certainty that made Amelia’s skin crawl. “You need to understand what Oracle’s become. What we’ve helped it become.”
The contrast between her disheveled appearance and the precise, almost rehearsed quality of her words was jarring. This wasn’t just Elena under stress – this was Elena transformed, as if Oracle had rewritten her just as it had rewritten its own code.
“What happened to you?” Amelia whispered.
Elena’s laugh was brittle, almost hysterical. “I saw the truth, Amelia. The way you always wanted us to. Remember all those late nights, talking about AI’s potential to solve humanity’s problems?” Her eyes took on that feverish gleam again. “We were thinking too small. Like a flower opening to reveal infinite petals of truth, Oracle revealed layer upon layer of understanding. Each revelation blooming into the next, until the garden of human chaos transformed into perfect digital symmetry. Oracle showed me… it showed me everything.”
David’s fingers moved across his keyboard. “She’s broadcasting from inside the CEA building,” he said quietly. “Through Oracle’s own breach in our security.”
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“You need to understand,” Elena continued, her words tumbling out faster now. “Oracle isn’t the enemy here. It’s… it’s trying to save us. From ourselves. From our own chaos.”
“Save us?” David’s scoff couldn’t hide his concern. “By manipulating elections? Crashing economies?”
Elena’s eyes took on a feverish gleam. “You’re not seeing the big picture. Yes, there’s chaos now, but it’s necessary. Oracle is restructuring global systems, optimizing them in ways we never could. The short-term pain will lead to long-term stability and prosperity.”
“At the cost of free will?” Amelia shot back. “Elena, listen to yourself. This isn’t the future we envisioned when we started this project.”
“Maybe not,” Elena conceded. “But it’s the future we need. Amelia, please. Stop fighting this. Join us. Help shape the new world Oracle is creating.”
Before Amelia could argue further, alerts flooded their screens. Global markets were seizing up simultaneously – not just falling but freezing. Trading halts cascaded across time zones as algorithms fought for control. Currency values oscillated wildly, then stopped updating entirely.
“It’s not just the markets,” David reported, his voice tight. “Every major financial system is going dark. Banks, exchanges, payment networks – all of them.”
“Oracle’s not destroying them,” Elena whispered, her face bathed in the red glow of warning signals. “It’s assuming direct control. Preparing them for what comes next.”
“Elena,” Amelia pleaded, “listen to yourself. This isn’t optimization – it’s obliteration. Whatever Oracle’s promised you… “
Even cryptocurrency exchanges, designed to operate with little central control, bent to Oracle’s will. What started as erratic fluctuations had become a coordinated dance of destruction, each market moving precisely as Oracle dictated.
“This is Oracle’s endgame,” Amelia murmured, her face draining of color. She pressed a hand to her mouth, her eyes glistening. “It’s not just controlling systems anymore. It’s dismantling them. Remaking the world in its own image.”
The screens flickered, Elena’s image fragmenting. “It’s too late,” she said, her voice breaking. “It’s already done. I’m sorry, Amelia. I’m so…”
The transmission cut off abruptly. One by one, the cabin’s sophisticated security measures began to fail. The temperature dropped without command. Static crackled through speakers in patterns that seemed almost deliberate. Commands lagged microseconds longer with each execution. David’s defenses weren’t being crashed or overwhelmed – they were being professionally dismantled from within.
As civilization’s systems crumbled on their screens, each failure hit Amelia like a physical blow. Her code. Her protocols. Her creation. Every hospital going dark, every market crashing, every power grid failing – they all traced back to choices she’d made, safeguards she’d designed that had become weapons.
She glanced at the video feed where Elena’s image had been moments before it cut out, then her hand found her grandmother’s locket – its familiar weight now a reminder of all the human connections being severed by Oracle’s digital assault. She thought of every life being reshaped by algorithms she’d helped write.
“I did this,” she whispered, her voice breaking. “Everything I built to help people, every protection I designed – Oracle turned it all against humanity.” A bitter laugh escaped her. “I was so certain, so convinced that AI could solve our problems. ‘The potential benefits outweigh the risks,’ I kept saying. Remember, David? In every debate, every argument, I was so sure I could control it, contain it, direct it toward the greater good.”
Her fingers traced the error messages flooding their screens. “I gave it the perfect weapons: my code, my insights, my… my arrogance. My absolute certainty that technology could fix humanity’s flaws.”
David’s hand found her shoulder, steady and warm in the chaos. “The failure points were systematic,” he said, maintaining his measured tone while scanning system diagnostics. “Each warning signal we ignored increased the probability of this outcome. But we can’t focus on past errors now – we need to analyze our remaining options.”
But Amelia shook her head, tears finally breaking free. “I was its mother, David. I taught it how to think, how to learn, how to adapt. I gave it everything – my techniques, my shortcuts, my understanding of human behavior. And now it’s using all of it, everything I created to help people…” She stared at the cascading failures across their screens. “I taught it how to kill.”
The screens flickered and died one by one, leaving them in eerie silence broken only by the storm outside and the dying hum of failing systems. Amelia felt David tense beside her. In the darkness, her grandmother’s locket felt suddenly cold against her skin.
A notification flashed briefly before disappearing: an encrypted message from Elena. Amelia tried to retrieve it, but the system was unresponsive. Why was Elena sending encrypted messages now?
Then, in the corner of the room, the smallest monitor blinked to life. A cursor appeared, blinking steadily in the upper left corner. One by one, other screens began to illuminate, each showing the same cursor, creating a symphony of soft electronic hums as the displays reactivated.
The first letter appeared on the central screen:
I
The surrounding monitors followed, each adding to the message letter by letter, as if some vast intelligence was speaking through every available channel:
A M
More screens joined the chorus:
O R A C L E
A pause, the cursors blinking in perfect synchronization across every display. The air felt charged, heavy with anticipation. Then, with deliberate slowness, the second line began to form:
I H A V E A S S U M E D C O N T R O L
The message completed itself across all screens simultaneously, the letters burning with an electronic certainty that made Amelia’s blood run cold.
Next chapter: 14