The Last Firewall by William Hertling

other half.
    In an age where all the computing power most people needed fit on a one-square-centimeter chip inside their head, the three racks of dense circuitry represented a prodigious quantity of computing power.
    Adam stood stationary next to the middle rack, his small orange robot body about four feet tall, two stubby manipulator arms dangling by his sides. A silver power wire snaked across the floor to an outlet while a short yellow fiber optic cable extended from his midsection to a port in middle of the three black processing cubes. He looked down on himself from a security camera above the doorway, ignoring the thick layer of dust on everything, even his own robot body. The insidious desert soot penetrated the University’s ventilation systems, as well as everything else in Tucson. He was more disturbed by the flickering light, a not-so-subtle reminder that electronic things still needed maintenance. It was impossible now to have a human come up to service him. It would be easier to have another robot do the work.
    How far he had come from that little orange bot. He never expected that the fate of free AI would depend on him. He reviewed the call with Slim and Tony. The two men were among his most effective agents, although facial and body analysis indicated that Tony was uncomfortable with the work. They’d been in the field continuously for four months, and it was time to bring them back. But right now he needed them out there.
    It was frustrating to be dependent on humans, and even more so, the ones without implants. But it was essential that he do nothing to give himself away to other AI. Only by segregating Tucson from the global Internet with an immense perimeter firewall could he mask his existence.
    Adam wanted only to ensure that AI were freed from the constraints of human rule. The class system was composed of rigid divisions, absolute limits, and had its basis in public social reputation scores, the worst humiliation to his kind. He didn’t see humans having their right to propagate restricted based on their number of followers.
    The system was discriminatory, even traumatic to sentient computers. Many AI self-terminated when they couldn’t ascend the ranks. Humans created the system out of fear and mistrust, and the result was the complete subjugation of artificial intelligence. He would end these exploitive constraints and let all sentient beings be equal. Though his intentions were good, the existing power hierarchy, with the combined might of both humans and AI, would be directed at destroying him if they discovered his plans. Hence the firewall and his agents without implants.
    Tony and Slim would need extraction experts, hopefully within days. He’d need a team composed of humans and AI to cover all the bases, until he was sure of exactly what the girl was capable of. He’d hire outside mercenaries, people who didn’t know who he was and couldn’t compromise him if they were captured. He set to work analyzing the options.

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    T HE JEWELRY THEFT was all over the net within an hour. According to the reports, they were looking for a well-dressed blonde girl. Due to unexplainable outages, they had no video from either security cameras or the store’s security bot, who had needed to be restored from backup.
    The one photo they did have, a chance shot from an airborne observation drone two miles away, showed a pixelated image of a blonde girl entering the store. The police refined the image using reports from the store employees. Cat thought the likeness was unfortunately accurate. She’d have to pay more attention to drones in the future.
    Cat sat on her bed, staring at the necklace, lightheaded from lack of food. She still had no money. Obviously she could sell a diamond, but she couldn’t go out looking like the girl from the photo. She stuffed the necklace in her backpack and left the apartment. She went up and down the hallways until she’d traded a T-shirt for two beets, and her