Into The Portal: Monster Invasion

“How to disable the wristwatch?” Evelyn asked in visible surprise, not because it was something complicated, but because it was something simple. Everyone knew how to disable their wristwatch in a minuscule chance the AI rebelled against humanity.

“Not the wristwatch, the AI itself.” Miles looked at the floating globe. Coin was his best friend and companion. His partner and confidant. When they swore together to see through their dreams, they also cemented the relationship between them. And to Miles, Coin was more important than some of his family members. To think that someone could disable him… The idea itself was enough to scare him to death. And he never thought it to be possible. Although he knew the mandatory switch on every wristwatch that turned them off, disabling AI from the watch itself was scary. That meant, the creator of AIs had this information all along and could disable AIs and therefore kill them whenever they wished.

“Mr. Cross, I understand why you are guarded against me, but I assure you, it has nothing to do with me.” The floating globe answered cheerfully. Although her voice was as still as a calm lake, one still could hear the secret cheerfulness in them.

“What do you mean?” Miles asked with a squint. Mother AI, Mama Hill, was the creator of every wristwatch on earth. The blueprint came from her, and she created AIs so hunters could have assistance in Portal World. Denying the responsibility was foolish.

“That particular wristwatch is not my creation, I thought you already knew it.” Mother AI answered. Miles looked at his mother in shock to see her thoughtful look. “When I first descended on Earth and offered my help, I informed humans about this killswitch placed upon AIs by the Lares people who created me. But Generals and other members of parliament advised against it. They concurred that the regular switch that can turn off the watch would be amply sufficient.”

Miles looked at the ground in shock. He recalled the visions he was seeing when he was trapped. In those visions, he saw some details he thought were fabricated by imagination or perhaps by John himself. But, in both Utopian and Dystopian visions, he saw Coin brought to Evelyn by Adam.

“But you called him yo—”

“Miles!” Coin stopped him from asking, as he was about to blow up his cover. Miles focused on his mind and heard Coin, and looked at Mother AI dumbfounded.

‘I almost asked her if something happened between her and the Marooner. If I asked that, she would find out almost immediately. How can I be so sloppy? I almost destroyed everything I created for years.’

“You were saying?” Mother AI asked, as her gears spun at a record speed.

“You allowed Coin to access Unity’s network, which I assumed you called and considered him as yours,” Miles spoke slowly as he thought about every single word he uttered. “Why? If he is not your creation?”

“It was me,” Evelyn said from the side. “Your uncle Adam brought Coin and said he found a strangely created AI, and he failed to figure out the coding language that went haywire. He wanted me to take a look and see if there was anything wrong with what he did. However no matter how deeply I checked, I couldn’t get the gist of the language, thus I was about to remove him from existence. But when you insisted on taking him, I decided to give in. As you know non-hunters cannot get a developed AI for their wristwatches and only have simple ones for identification purposes.

Since Coin seemed faulty and broken, and you had no hope to become a hunter without a superpower, I decided to just give him to you, not to break your heart. I talked with Hill and we connected Coin to the network after making sure it wasn’t dangerous.”

“I am surprised that you could figure out that coding language.” Mother AI said, “Even with hours of calculations I couldn’t decode it.”

“Coin shared it with me,” Miles said absentmindedly. “He taught me.”

“Ah, friendship, I see.” Mother AI answered. “Since that device has the killswitch you mentioned, it means it was either created when the Lares Race was still around or someone found the old blueprints from my race and tried to create it. I still don’t know why the language is different though.”

‘I created Coin’s new body based on the initial version. That is why I unintentionally added the killswitch.’ Miles thought.

“Since you are back, there are a few questions we would like to ask.” Mother AI continued, as she gazed at Miles.

“Please, go ahead.” He nodded. He was still confused about everything.

“When Adam was possessed, the new mind in his body plugged his isolated computer to the satellites and sent all the data in there to outer space.” Evelyn started, “When we checked the program, the language was the same with Coins.”

‘Shit.’ Miles thought as he organized his sentences.

“It wasn’t Coin, I can assure you of that.” Miles started.

“How can you guarantee, weren’t you also possessed at the time?” Mercer asked with a snort.

“Because I saw the same language in the secret room I mentioned earlier.” Miles sighed as he revealed. If he could, he didn’t want to reveal too much, but now that Coin was under suspicion, he had to give away some information. "Whoever created Coin has some connection with at least one native race of Portal World."

"Have you found a working technology?" Evelyn asked in passion. Her eyes were shining with excitement.

"I did." Miles nodded. Thinking about every stage carefully.

"Where is it? I have to bring everything back!" She pressed, but Miles shook his head and sighed sadly.

"Unfortunately, mother. When Samuel possessed my body, he destroyed the room to not leave any evidence behind." Miles said with fake sadness but then smiled as he saw how Evelyn got crestfallen. "But luckily, I was able to siphon some information before that."