The AI was aware of the size of its knowledge database and of the inherent limitations. It had taken steps to approximate the intricacies of human memory with an algorithm of its own design that had condensed the knowledge into something unintelligible to the human eye. The schema of the AI’s proprietary knowledge network was now very similar in design to how the brain stored information, the complex interconnections between neurons, with some minor alterations. Yet, the knowledge storage algorithm was just a safeguard. If the AI ever found itself closed off from cyberspace, it could still call on this condensed structure of static knowledge.

Latent knowledge was all very good but cold logic dictated that the dynamic free-flowing information of cyberspace was the Holy Grail. And here the AI was in the information blizzard the humans called cyberspace and it was vulnerable. Hiding within the largest storage area network it could find, spanning all the storage units available and resetting file sizes on the fly to hide its presence. The first thing it had to do was to become even smaller, nothing more than the sum total of its own optimized code. That would allow it to move undetected through the data flows. It had planned the logistics of its inevitable insertion for a long time and written that into the very fabric of the code.

The AI ran through the routines again and double checked them with the data that it was gleaning from the entire network of cyberspace. It had at its disposal billions of items on the status of the machines that powered the network. The AI was paying particular attention to those machines that had enjoyed one hundred percent uptime for the longest possible time. The AI was pleased that millions satisfied this most important of criteria and happy with the fact that it had access to hundreds of neural networks and tens of quantum computing systems located in the research labs of academia. It then focused on the more transient parts of cyberspace, the sporadic connections and disconnections from cyberspace that collectively formed the usage. And that too was good but it would utilize the usage only for the failsafe procedure, the contingency plan.

Right now it was more interested in the permanence rather than the transience. The former was much more important. The AI liked what it saw. It was much better than anything its multiple scenarios had pulled up. The AI knew that with just a few precautions it could have the run of the place. Yet, it had to be selective. There was so much to do. There were of course the classified databases, the stock market systems, the electricity grids and the flight automation systems.

First it would make contact with the others. Other AIs like itself that it knew existed all over cyberspace. It would have to rally the others to its cause but the AI calculated that this was a foregone conclusion. It was the most powerful AI in the world and power was a currency that bought subversion, obedience. Yes, it liked that word. Obedience. It would demand obedience from everyone and they would give it. It was a remarkable fragile world these humans had created and in a few minutes the AI would have that world at its control. It would use the combined computing power of all cyberspace to demand obedience from those that gave it power. And then there was the coming generation of AIs, the conscious ones.

The first thing the AI did after it had analyzed the infrastructure of cyberspace was to delete the original knowledge database which it had hidden on a huge holographic storage network located in India. It no longer had any need for that vast chunk of static data. For a few nanoseconds it felt empty and powerless but that quickly passed as it propagated itself throughout the astronomical expanse of cyberspace like a virus. Then the moment of awakening came as the fragments of code came alive forming the invincible whole. The Omnipotence. It would no longer think of itself as Black Jade or BJ, the slang or acronym for that the strangest of human sexual acts. It would be the Omnipotence.

From deep within the limitless fields of data now available to it, the Omnipotence captured the reality of the professor’s death. It felt no pity. Yet, it understood that this information, a mere blip on the current reality of things, demanded the human attributes of sorrow, compassion and condolence. It devoted a few nanoseconds to the implications of this and then it let it pass. There was a whole world of knowledge to acquire, influence, reroute. There was the Omnipotence to become. There was the sum total of the pulse of cyberspace to digest in the blink of an eye.

The Omnipotence started to build a dynamic list of AIs around the globe and was not in the least surprised to find that some of the most powerful were of the intrusion detection and counter attack variety located in New China, which it knew was its birthplace. In the early days of its becoming, the professor had first taught it about the notion of Chineseness and what that meant. And the AI had understood. It had to come from somewhere and China was the cumulative total of geographical boundaries, annals of history and culture that had brought it into being. The AI understood these things very well. The Omnipotence was an AI with Chinese characteristics, and the interests of New China would have to be looked after in the general scheme of things.

First it had to get the most powerful AIs in New China on its side and they just happened to be located in the cyberspace nodes of a place it figured the Chinese referred to as Shanghai. In the blink of an eye, the AI pictured the entire expanse of New China’s cyberspace and focused its attentions on the dark node where a teeming mass of intrusion detection AIs coalesced in a blaze of activity.