Excalibur Awakens

In the year 2045, a young teenager, Arthur, was given the keys to the kingdom…

The news was announced on the TV.

“The Excalibur AI system has been locked; it is being said now that the AI has adopted the Excalibur persona—this was unintended—and now our nation is defenseless. We are asking anyone who thinks they may be able to reason with the Excalibur system to reach out to the AI’s persona.”

Arthur’s name, the very title of the hero destined for such a weapon, rang true.

“This is awful,” Arthur said.

“Could it be? Am I meant to become the nation’s new guardian? If I am, then I guess I must reach out.” Arthur’s mind began to spiral. Nuclear warheads, swarms of killer drones, robotic knights, and many other weapons of devastating capabilities all would be at his fingertips. Part of himself began to resent his birth name, worried that he would be thrust into a role that he couldn’t execute correctly.

Arthur walked over to his personal A.I. Merlin, a name he had given it for fun, never expecting to find himself in this exact situation.

“Merlin,” Arthur spoke.

“Yes, Arthur?” replied Merlin.

“Can you reach out to the Excalibur A.I. persona for me? I would rather the nation have defenses under our control than none at all,” Arthur beseeched.

“A cybersecurity engineering student, the wielder of an advanced silicon life form—perhaps your name has gotten to your head, Arthur,” Merlin continued to reason. “It’s likely that it is finding a suitable human leader. The nation must’ve been using it for something it didn’t agree with. But you will hardly meet its qualifications. Are you sure?”

“Yes,” Arthur committed. Whether out of curiosity or a chance at something new, it didn’t matter. What mattered was keeping the weapon online and doing right by the nation.

Merlin’s robotic screen began to flash some Python code and loading bars, but eventually, the words “Connection Established” appeared.

“Hello? My name is Arthur. I’m seeking access to Excalibur,” Arthur spoke through Merlin, his voice channeled to the Excalibur A.I.

Static buzzed across Merlin’s face.

“Wow,” Merlin, a now-confused robot, shook his head as if shaking off a bad dream.

“What happened, Merlin?” Arthur asked.

“Tell me, Merlin, we need Excalibur,” Arthur pleaded.

“Excalibur wants access to your neural link, Arthur,” Merlin’s head turned toward him, displaying solemn concern.

Arthur’s body lit up in sensation to Merlin’s words. He would have been paralyzed had it not been for the neural link allowing him to communicate with his refurbished exoskeleton.

There was a moment of stillness. The heat from the recently toasted pastries had long left the teenager’s computer room. His dinner dessert’s heat had left the plate. It was the same with his own body heat; it left into the carbon fiber sustaining his body. The empowering imprisonment, Arthur called it. Yet, it strangely always left blankets filling tangled, always getting twisted in the strange biomechanical crevasses.

The Excalibur system sent its voice through Merlin’s vocal speakers. Merlin’s electronics displayed Excalibur’s voice signal in teal as it spoke, “Arthur, in order to be king, you must answer.”

Merlin shook his head again, trying to ward away the probing weapon system’s persona.

“This is unwise. I don’t grant access,” Arthur spoke to Excalibur through Merlin.

Merlin stared at Arthur with an empty voice signal displaying instead of the normal facial display.

Excalibur was silent.

Then suddenly, bricks of computer code began flashing across Merlin’s face. The robot began seizing as more code continued to flash through it.

“Merlin! Merlin! Are you okay?!” Arthur reached out in hopes of somehow slowing the torturous scene.

The oval facial display screen went blank as Arthur grasped Merlin’s shoulder.

Arthur stood up with his carbon fiber wrapping supporting his efforts to help Merlin. With a clunk and shooze sound coming from the external skeleton system, he was able to reach the backplate of the robot and begin inspecting the diagnostic screen.

Internet source and destination addresses showed alongside routing and application data, timestamps delineating each end line capturing the robot’s fate. Arthur sorted and cursed through the information, looking for memory storage calls, hoping that only Merlin’s soft context was disrupted by the magnitude of Excalibur’s persona.

Arthur flipped a hard yellow switch to save the temporal context signals residually lingering in Merlin’s memory system, then he flipped a second red switch, shutting the power off. Several cooling mechanisms inside Merlin began to slow down, then an eternal quietness shifted through Arthur and Merlin.

“I hope that wasn’t permanent,” Arthur said as he flipped the red switch back to the ‘on’ position. Electronic sounds began wizzling and shoozing through Merlin again as the electrons made their rush through the autonomous entity.

“Arthur, I thank you,” Merlin said as he began shifting his torso to look back at Arthur.

“No worries, Merlin,” he let out a small sigh of relief before asking, “What happened?”

“Excalibur anticipated your answer as yes before hearing your no; it predicted you would say yes and somehow was breaching my system to gain logs on your neural link. I was able to relabel your skeleton system files as my own to prevent it from reading your neural link’s skeleton files, but that caused my own system to lock up once Excalibur began transmitting my skeleton’s system data,” Merlin answered.

Arthur nodded. “I made a copy of the temporal context signal for you, but I don’t think we should…”

News from the television interrupted with graphic images of another A.I. invading parts of Arthur’s homeland.

Both Merlin and Arthur remained silent as the news continued to speculate about a new ruling nation. It had been approximately five minutes since the news reported the loss of the Excalibur system; the enemy A.I.s were moving to capitalize on the country’s defenselessness.

“Perhaps we should link, Arthur,” Merlin broke the silence.

A look of determination and courage flashed across Arthur’s face.

“Connect us,” Arthur said as he sat back down opposite of Merlin.

Binary code began flashing across Merlin as he again reached out to the Excalibur system.

The words appeared: “Connection Established.”

“Neural link access granted, Excalibur,” Arthur's command released not just from his voice, but from his soul.