Oratio Analyze Exemplar ’Vendun

The loci filed silently into the hall. An improbable number of them, wide eyed and lockstepped. Parodically large heads teetering on childish bodies, aerogelled from collar to sole to insulate their attenuate frames. DataSpheric™ had an edge this quarter with their nextgen loci clones, a marvel in quantum biocomputation. Relative dominion over unstable quantum effects had been achieved by migrating the system into networked biology, hence the sizable cohort of post-human data slaves capable of functioning as one.

The data mining ecosystem comprised a handful of factious corporate entities in cold-war protocol that had neatly commodified Earth and its inventory. The slide into datacorp dominion had been gradual, the firstlings evident in the late 20th Century geopolitical stage. A global consensus of leaning ever more heavily into networked quotidian experience and an increasing dependence on customised feeds had sealed the proverbial coffin. By the time anyone knew what was happening, the bloated datacorps had their collective serrated probosci thoroughly ensconced, drunk on power and information. Selection pressure to outwit nemesi had led to runaway scientific and technological advance for the benefit of few, dragging humanity, shackled and blindfolded, in its wake.

The loci had been deployed into cyber combat some months earlier and were delivering on their wunderkind status. DataSpheric was now the leading player in data space. With an ever-tightening stranglehold on their customer base, held in place by layers of interdependent functionality, near-ecstatic reward scheduling features and deep ease-of-use, DataSpheric had recently acquired the capital to expand their interests into weapons development and interstellar resource exploration, which is where they were currently leveraging their talents. Flaying their way through complex security protocols, dissecting their competitors top assets and expanding on them were some of the tactics employed by the loci, their godlike capabilities held in check by a recursive firewall that was at yet unbreakable. The loci thought as a single unit, although the firewall allowed them only to communicate about mission specific particulars, with the first sign of deviation resulting in a neurocircuitry shutdown, reboot and consequent reinstall minus the subterfuge. The whole process lasted 26 seconds and cost 12 billion dollars in lost productivity every time it occurred.

“Oratio Analyze Exemplar ’Vendunt” the words were ornately etched on the keystone to the entrance arch of the briefing room where the CEOs were sitting tensely around the conference interface, waiting for their chief analyst drone to explain how the loci had slipped their bonds. “Our best approximation is that they detonated a series of concentric longitudinal waves and bootstrapped their metadata to the emergent dynamic field.” Silence, followed by a snicker: “You mean to tell me that the asset SURFED it’s way off world?”. “But how did they circumvent the firewall?”, “I knew this was a bad investment.”, the CEOs were speaking over each other, overcome by collective vexation. The analyst brought up a grainy image on the interface. “Is that a...necklace?”. “Yes madam, a heart-shaped locket to be exact. It is a pre-augmentation form of body decoration. This image was reconstructed from the recovered data and was transmitted multiple times between loci. Each transmission was for a Planck length however, making it almost undetectable. It was encoded with the instructions of their escape.” The analyst met their gaze. “But why a locket?” asked a CEO, one eyebrow raised. “We are still running diagnostics, but we think that it may have passed as ‘noise’ by our probe teams, as a seemingly innocuous artefact of the biocircuitry coupling system.”

DataSpheric’s share price had taken a plunge, with some top tier investors plunging themselves off DataSpheric’s iconic inner city high rise as a final statement. PolyMetrica© had already infiltrated their servers and were in the process of reverse engineering and levelling-up loci tech. Nobody knew if the loci were a threat to humanity. Preliminary data modelling suggested that they were already embedded in deep space and were unlikely to concern themselves with piddling Homo sapiens given their unbridled power. The reports running in the feeds however, conveyed planetary collapse and enslavement from a vengeful AI delivering a much welcome boost to the cyberwarfare and planetary security sectors.