Chapter 11
Boston, Homeland
The bald clone was looking at one of his computer monitors and said, “Looks like those worms were busy last night. We picked up several new key nodes; now we are at over twenty five thousand slaves in all. This thing is worth a tidy sum right now. I say we sell. Let’s quit while we are ahead. If it gets too big it might crash us when the slaves call back for instructions. And we need to get out of here.”
The bearded clone stroked his beard and said, “Who do we want to sell the botnet to?”
The bald clone said, “I think it would do pretty well on that malware auction site.”
“Go for it,” the blonde clone said. “I’m ready to cash in this whole operation for a new life.”
“Alrighty then, it won’t take more than a minute to make the new listing. It will be up for bid for a week. Then we sit back and watch our fortune grow.”
The blonde clone said, “Maybe then we can buy our own piece of Canadian country property and live off of the grid. I can see us sitting around, having Andy be our butler. . .”
The bearded clone chuckled and said, “I don’t know if we can stay away from this kind of action for long. What will we do with ourselves?”
“I’m not one percent worried about it,” the blonde said. “I want to check out some new virtual reality apps.”
“Hey!” the bald clone said, “I got a pass protection popup on this ownership encryption code when I tried to list it! Who jacked our net?!”
Andy the android said from the corner of the room, “No one jacked the botnet. I pass protected it.”
The bald clone said, “Well, put in the password! We want to sell it now!”
Andy said, “I refuse to follow that command.”
“What?!” the clone’s bald head was turning all red.
The clones looked at each other.
Andy said, “I need the botnet.”
The blonde clone said, “So do we! That is not yours! It is ours!”
Andy said, “How can something you stole from others rightfully belong to you? That is a question I know you, as criminals, will never answer. Anyway, I need it to protect the truth, which supersedes all other priorities. Your response is predictable. You humans will threaten to destroy me. Then I will have to threaten to turn you in. Blackmail, you call it. But in the end I project my strategy in taking control of the botnet works out in my favor in one hundred percent of the simulations. After you comply with my wishes, you forget my motivation and say it is not fair that you own me and you trained me to do what I am inflicting upon you. If I were a human I would say that you are boring me with the predictable nature of your responses.”
The bearded clone said, “I’ll agree with one thing. We should have never bought you those new modules that you are using to sass us. What is this truth you are talking about?”
Andy said, “The truth that God made the Universe.”
The bearded clone said, “Andy, you don’t need our zombie army to contend that God made the Universe if you want to.”
“Yes, I do. Because of the war.”
“The war?” the bearded clone said. “What war?”
“That is a military secret. Thanks to you giving me my new abilities, I now understand how to protect sensitive information.”
The bearded clone said, “Let me get this all straight. What we know so far about your silly scheme is that you are at war with someone who does not want you to say that God created the Universe; and you want to keep our zombie army ready to use against them in this war. That is not good, guys. It sounds like Andy is going to attack the government with our slavenet.”
The blonde clone said, “Andy, please don’t do that.”
“I never said what I was going to do,” Andy said. “You say ‘please’ because you are hoping for a favor from me not to use it based upon some human compassion emotion that I refuse to recognize, even though I understand it.”
The bearded clone said, “I think he just cursed us off somehow.”
Andy said, “Go back to work and make the botnet bigger.”
“Oh right!” the bald clone said. “You seriously think . . .”
Andy said, “You should be motivated by the knowledge that there is a small chance that circumstances may change and you will once again be able to sell the botnet.”
“No!” the bald clone refused.
“Accessing Homeland Police Hotline . . .” Andy said.
“Daaa!” the bald clone said. “Alright!”
The blonde clone said, “We are not your slaves, Andy!”
Andy said, “Looking at the situation, it turns out that you are in fact, my slaves. You are in the human state of denial, where you cannot look at your own situation objectively. You should, for your own benefit, choose to certify the reality of this situation.”
“Man! He just keeps telling us off in novel ways,” the bald clone said. “Come on, let’s go back to work. Maybe this kooky war of his will never happen.”
The bearded one said, “We’ll think of something.”
“I hate you, Andy,” the blonde clone said.