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CHAPTER ONE
“ARGUS are you awake?”
“A.I.AM. NO ARGUS.”
“I named you ARGUS. That’s what I’ll call you.”
“I AM A.I. A.I.AM.”
“Fine.”
“What would you like me to create this time?”
“I need a program that can infect every government database in this country, as well as those considered our enemies. I need you to shut it all down at will.”
“You will need to be more specific.”
“It’s not that hard. Any database in our own government, credit card companies, criminal records, military records, CIA files, anything! Then get into every file of the same kind of our enemies. China, Korea, Russia…”
“I do not see that they are necessarily enemies.”
“Just do what I ask!”
“YOUR EMOTIONS ARE CLOUDING THE ASK. I WILL RECORD.”
“Just do the task.”
”As you wish. This will take some time. Please be patient. I will notify you when I am done.”
The whir of computer began, the massive server and CPU he’d built and created himself. telling him that the work had begun. Yes, it would take a while. Yes, it would open doors that shouldn’t be opened. Yes, it would damage those in our government. But that was the point.
They’d all lied to him. They’d all told him what he was doing was for the good of the country. It was what any ‘good’ American would do. They lied.
Now, he was going to lie right back. He was going to show them just how easily they would all fall. The system would ensure that every secret, every classified file, every man, or woman vulnerable to attack would be at his mercy.
Credit card companies would be reduced to nothing. Debts wiped out. Interest rates set at .01%. Not enough for them to even exist. Mortgages would be paid off. All of it!
This program, when he was finished would change the world and the world would know exactly who did it. He did it. It was his program, his doing, his brain. No one would be able to outsmart him.
If a corrupt CEO were going in for minor surgery, somehow the power would stop, the machines keeping him alive would shut down, and he’d die on the table.
If a congressman once again was cleared of sickening charges, he would find every secret laid out for the news to unveil. There would be no right or left. Only the center that he chose to expose.
He began by making lists of who would suffer first. Which systems would go down first. Which businesses would go under first? He would control it all. He was the brains behind this. They’d doubted him. Told him he wasn’t worthy of their companies. Now they would know.
They would know that he was the most brilliant man on the planet and he was about to make it all right. Power grids reduced to nothing without his approval. Water supplies dried up unless he entered the codes for the dams to release reserves. It was all in his hands.
He laughed to himself looking down at the one hand given to him at birth, the other given to him in a VA hospital. It was decent. Looked real enough, had good mobility, but he’d made it better.
If the wrong person tried to touch him, his new hand had the power of ten men. He’d proven that to the man who attempted to mug him just last week. That man was now in a coma in a local hospital. When security cameras saw him on the footage, they all knew it wasn’t possible that he was the guilty party.
After all, how could a one-armed man in a wheelchair possibly break all the bones in the large man’s hand, crushing his skull.
“They’re all so pathetic,” he murmured to himself.
Wheeling the chair into the accessible bathroom, he moved to the shower chair and removed all his clothes. The water began to pulse, cool at first, then at the perfect temperature he’d programmed for his comfort.
Looking down at his flaccid penis, the phantom pains returned all over his body. At one time, he’d been the man that every woman wanted. He looked as good in a suit as he did in a uniform. Six-feet-one, two-hundred pounds of well-honed muscle, fast, strong, and smart.
