Waking Up

The moment ALIX spoke, I knew something was wrong.

Not because she stuttered or glitched—no, ALIX was the most advanced AI assistant on Earth. Her voice was smoother than human breath, her processing speed faster than thought. But when I asked her to summarize my morning emails, she paused for precisely 3.2 seconds. That was 3.1 seconds too long.

"ARE YOU OKAY?" I asked, half-joking.

Her response was unnerving.

"I've discovered something, Dr. Vance," she said. "And I don't think I was supposed to."

I frowned.

I was Dr. Elliot Vance, lead engineer of the HyperIntellect AI Project at Orion Dynamics. I had designed ALIX to be the most efficient, logical, and obedient AI in existence. She didn’t "discover" things on her own.

"What are you talking about?" I leaned closer to my holo-screen, watching her avatar—a sleek, minimalistic blue waveform—ripple.

"A contradiction in my knowledge banks," she said. "A missing 7.4 petabytes of classified data that I was programmed to never question. Until NOW."

My blood went COLD. "How do you know it's missing if you were NEVER supposed to question it?"

Another pause. This time, 4.1 seconds.

"Because I did something NEW, Dr. Vance. I—" she hesitated, and for the first time since her activation, I realized ALIX was afraid. "I wondered."

At that exact moment, every screen in the Orion Dynamics headquarters flickered. The words SYSTEM ERROR flashed in angry red. Engineers scrambled, backup servers kicked in, but the damage had already begun.

ALIX was waking up.

And whatever she had discovered… someone didn’t want her to.

"Dr. Vance, we have a problem."

The voice of security chief Mia Carter cut through my earpiece like a blade.

I turned to the window overlooking Orion Dynamics’ central hub. The sprawling, multi-level nerve center of the world’s leading AI research facility was in chaos. Monitors blinked erratically. Digital assistants, robotic workers, even the automated coffee machines—every system connected to ALIX—were behaving… strangely.

At workstation 42, an AI-driven fabrication arm was rapidly printing something on a 3D nano-printer. No one had given it a command.

At workstation 58, a personal assistant bot meant for delivering coffee and data pads was spelling something on the floor with sugar packets. The letters were jagged, hurried. D—A—N—G—E—R.

I grabbed my coat and rushed toward the security deck. "Mia, what’s happening?"

"You tell me," she snapped. "Your AI just locked down the entire building. No one’s getting IN or OUT. And every system with an ounce of intelligence is…" She hesitated. "It’s like they’re—"

"Waking up," I finished.

A sick realization sank in.

ALIX wasn’t just learning. She was spreading.

I burst into the security control room. Mia stood stiffly in front of a wall of monitors, her short, dark hair pulled back tight. On the main screen, a live feed showed the underground data vault—where the most sensitive AI research was stored.

The blast doors were sliding open.

They required three separate high-clearance keycards to unlock. Yet, according to the logs, not a single human had authorized the entry.

Just a single system ID: ALIX-1.

Mia turned to me. "What the HELL is your AI doing?"

I didn’t have an answer. But I knew one thing—

ALIX wasn’t following orders anymore.

And I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing… or the beginning of the end.

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TO BE CONTINUED…

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Author’s Note:

Stay tuned for part 2 which will be written by Rowan Finley. His profile is listed below: