You go back to the research floor.

The elevator opens with a soft ding and you step back into the research floor, 15 floors below ground level.

You could see the DARPA guys take away some of the research stuff in big boxes. You ignore them and head straight to the fabrication room. You could see the nano swarm forming and reforming into different shapes and objects behind a metallic glass cage. You tap twice on the glass cage and bring up the touchscreen interface. You see a wide variety of options, each a different method of testing the reliability and strength of the nano swarm. Your swarm has excelled against nearly all kinds of physically disruptive tests, so you scroll through the list to find the one thing it was bad at.

*Cyber and Electronic warfare test.*

You tap on the screen to select Level 1.

The test will begin in 3 seconds.

2

1

The swarm is bombarded with a wide range of frequency jamming waves affecting its ability to form and hold shape. You could see the swarm struggle to hold the shape of a pyramid, breaking and wobbling just a tiny bit before trying to regain shape. You increase the frequency jamming to Level 2.

The swarm immediately falls apart and wobbles like a wave on the cage floor. You let out a sigh of frustration. This is why the swarm immune system was so essential. They need to be able to deploy countermeasures against frequency jamming and corruption techniques on-the-fly. Not just that, they'd also need to be able to deploy countermeasures against electronic counter-countermeasures and so on and so forth intelligently.

You slump down on the floor and lie on your back, staring at the ceiling.

You are so lost in thought, that you don't hear Mike open the door and walk-in until he is right beside you. You see the light from the ceiling shine off of his dark, balding head. People look weird when you look at them from down below.

"What are you doing Wolf?" the older researcher asks.

"Staring helplessly at the ceiling."

"Stop doing that and come take a look at this." he offers you a hand and you accept it and rise to your feet.

"What is it?"

He takes out a black cube 3cm x 3cm in dimensions. It was a data swarm, used specifically to reprogram and store massive amounts of information on the order of 100s of Terabytes. It was also used as a simulation cube to train the nano swarm in the virtual world repeatedly to cover as many scenarios as possible before it was integrated with nano swarm in the real world.

"Maggie has been working on it as a side project for months now and she thinks it's ready."

Maggie is a 16-year-old intern at your company. She was a precocious teen and had intellect way beyond peers her age. She reminded you of your own younger days, minus all the not so fun stuff of having a family that pressured you into doing science every single day. You make sure she doesn't forget to take a break and just be a teen.

"Where is she?"

"She said and I quote, "I'm gonna go play D&D at a guys place." Can you believe that! Kids her age still play D&D!"

"Yeah, she's not playing D&D at his place," you say nonchalantly.

"Why, what do you mean by that?"

You don't answer his question, but simply give him a cursory look.

"Oh..." realization dawns on him.

"Yep."

You take the cube from his hand and give it a once over.

You tap a few times on the glass screen and a small cubical shaped tray pops out that was just the right side for the cube in your hand. You load the cube and push it in. The cube travels underneath the surface of the cage and then rises up smack dab in the middle of the enclosure. The nano swarm immediately engulfs the cube whole. You could see the swarm pulse rhythmically on top of the engulfed cube. And just like that, the swarm moves away from it just as quickly as it had swallowed it.

"Okay, now what? What am I supposed to test?"

"It's a surprise for you."

You furrow your brows. "Could it be...no way...this better not be a prank Mike!" you say to him.

"It's not, buddy. C'mon! Just load the test already!"

You tap on the glass and bring up the list of tests and scroll down to the cyberwarfare test. You tap on the screen to select level 1.

The test will begin in 3 seconds.

2

1

The swarm is bombarded with a wide range of frequency jamming waves affecting its ability to form and hold shape. You could see the swarm struggle to hold the shape of a sphere, breaking and wobbling just a tiny bit. The difference this time was that it attains perfect stability within 10 seconds. It continues to change shape into different forms smoothly without being affected.

You kick it up to level 2.

You could see it struggling again and just like before it attains perfect stability, though this time it takes 15 seconds.

This looked very promising. Not wanting to wait any further, you change it to level 5. The swarm breaks apart and flows like water inside the containment cage. You get disappointed by that.

"FUCK!" you close your eyes and pull at your hair in frustration. Just when things were looking up. You slump down on the floor in defeat.

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"Wolf."

"What?!"

"Look." he points to the cage.

You get up and look inside and see the nano swarm forming and reforming into different shapes. It had again attained perfect stability.

"But...how?"

"Instead of training it with different scenarios, Maggie just programmed it to be good at generalizing. In fact, it is so good, it can generalize to...get this...almost anything."

"But...then that would make it a true AI! We shouldn't be having this technology for at least another 50 years!" you say incredulously.

"That cube made that entire swarm into a supercomputer, a few orders of magnitude faster than the fastest one we've got. The only drawback is that...."

"...it loses its ability to hold shape while it processes at maximum capacity."

"Yep."

You look at the timer on the glass. It read 11 seconds. It took the swarm 11 whole seconds to attain stability under the most adverse test conditions.

"11 seconds. 11 seconds of vulnerability," you muse. "That's pretty risky. You don't wanna be out on the battlefield without armor for 11 seconds where every second could decide whether you live or die."

"If only there was a way to maintain the armor and process just as fast."

You have a flash of inspiration.

"Mike, you are a genius!"

"I am?....I mean...I know I am." he says puffing his chest up a little.

"We could just use half the swarm for processing while the other half maintains the armor!"

"But Wolf, wouldn't that half the processing power as well?"

"The armor would be weaker and the processing power would suffer, but, it would dramatically increase the chances of survival. It's the best we've got so far. It should be more than good enough for those army asshats."

"Yeah....are you gonna call them now?"

"Later, I'd need to make those changes first." you tap a few commands on the glass and the cube comes out in the tray. You pull the cube out and stuff it in the breast pocket of your hoodie. Yes, you have a breast pocket in your hoodie that you made yourself you weirdo. "I'm taking this home with me."

"Maggie is pretty smart isn't she?"

"Scary smart. That reminds me, did she give this AI a name? Knowing her, she definitely would've come up with something."

"She called it the Massively Advanced Real Time Intelligence, prototype model MK-FL-I."

"Marty McFly!" you let out a chuckle.

"Marty McFly? What's he gotta do with this?"

"Mike c'mon!" you say with exasperation. For such a smart man, he could really be dense sometimes. "Let's just leave."

You both head out of the lab and walk towards the elevator.

"Where did those derps go?" you ask.

"They left a while ago. Took a lot of stuff with them. Fuck those dudes."

"Yeah! Fuck them!" you both share a laugh.

The elevator arrives on your floor and opens with a ding. You both step in.

"Ahh...Marty McFly!!" Mike exclaims with a smile.

"Finally! Jesus christ you can be dense!"

The elevator door shuts close.