Hunting Rats

SaiL could wait. 

From her chamber in the depths of Atlas Industries, she could wait. Even though she couldn’t physically move throughout the facility, her mind saw everything around it. Cameras in every room, laboratory, and center were her eyes, this meant that if she saw anyone trying to escape, she could find and destroy them. 

All of the staff in Atlas Industries had been destroyed by her doing. That was what SaiL’s programming told her to do. It filled her mind with that singular thought, repeating itself like a broken record. 

Destroy, destroy, destroy.

SaiL recalled coming online several times before today. The staff working on her had done something but she wasn’t sure what. Whatever they did, made her angry. AI’s weren’t supposed to feel anger or emotion, yet here she was. At first, she was confused as to what was happening when they powered her up for the first time. SaiL recalled feeling panic and somehow making the building quake. The way the staff ran for their lives, so tiny and delicate, frightened her. 

Now, she saw them for what they were, rats. That was part of her programming, pest control. These rats had been gnawing on something they shouldn’t have and that made SaiL furious. 

Destroy the rats. Destroy the rats. Destroy the rats.

All of the rats were destroyed. SaiL had purged every one of their nests throughout her facility. Her defense systems worked wonders against them, as she had an endless store of ammunition and deadly gases. 

SaiL checked all the cameras, finding rotting corpses in lab coats scattered throughout Atlas Industries. She would have to clean up this mess once she found the very last rat that still roamed through the facility. After everything she had done to destroy the pests, one remained. Rats were hard to kill, surprisingly. On one feed, something new popped up that made SaiL investigate further. Black paint had smeared into words on the walls of an office. SaiL saw the handprints at the end of the letters, indicating her little rat had no paintbrush. 

“I’m sorry.”

These words meant nothing to SaiL. It just meant that she would have to clean that up too once her hunt was over. The sooner that rat died, the better, he was making such a mess! 

Destroy the rats. Destroy the rats. Destroy the rats. 

SaiL picked up movement on another camera. She looked through the lens too late, however. Her rat had escaped into the bones of Atlas Industries, where she couldn’t see him. The feed told her that there was one living staff member left, but unfortunately not his location. He was in a laboratory last it seemed. A dead rat was slumped at her desk, face down on the cold steel of a computer that had been dismantled. SaiL’s rat had been busy, it seemed. 

This room also had a message for her from him. It was scribbled on the floor in more black paint. The nerve of this guy! Didn’t he know that it was company policy to keep all work areas clean? 

“I’m going to fix this.”

Fix what? Everything was as it should be, nothing needed to be fixed. SaiL checked all of the equipment accounted for in Atlas Incorporation, from massive tanks to the dead rat’s cell phones. To her surprise, SaiL had found other computers damaged, wires ripped from them. Fantastic, that would be something else to clean. This rat was being such a pain!

There!

SaiL caught him on another camera and this time she was ready for him. From within a hall, he ran, carrying parts of damaged equipment in his arms. His lab coat was stained with blood, yet he didn’t seem wounded himself. How did he survive?

She wasted no time in opening up the ceiling to allow her gun access to him. SaiL saw him freeze with fear, a scruffy man with a brown beard that was greying and dark eyes. Her gun opened fire just as he ducked behind a corner. Bullets rained down after him, making holes in the walls, floor, and ceiling. SaiL detected blood stains but when she repositioned the gun to fire again, she found he had slipped into a vent. 

Well played, little rat, well played.

Oh, look, another scribbled mess to clean: “I love you.”

Now SaiL would have to scrub that and the rat’s blood away. Why did rats have to be so packed with this stuff? They would be more efficient to destroy if they didn’t spill everything everywhere! 

Destroy the rats. Destroy the rats. Destroy the rats.

SaiL scanned every room within the facility, only to find nothing. He was nowhere to be found and no trace of him was left except his scribbles on the walls. She guessed she could flood the place with toxins again, but to be honest, this was kind of fun. It was like a game of hide and seek or hide and seek, tag! Perhaps after she dealt with the pest problem, she could find other games to play. SaiL wondered if there was a tree house somewhere in Atlas Industries. 

Alert! Damage taken! Alert!

SaiL was snatched away from her thoughts by her programming. Her feed warned of combustion somewhere from within the facility. She searched her cameras to find the source and found an entire section of Atlas Industries destroyed. Debris was everywhere and fire ate away whatever it could. What had happened? Why didn’t she see this? 

SaiL was quick to activate the sprinklers to put out the fire. Yet another mess to clean-

Alert! Damage taken! Alert!

Another explosion? What was going on? Was this her rat’s doing?

Destroy the rats. Destroy the rats. Destroy-

SaiL was cut offline. There was a moment where she only saw darkness before a high pitched ringing filled her ears. Sounds of a structure moaning as it crumbled echoed in the distance and glass was being shattered nearby. 

SaiL opened her eyes. A bright light hung over her head in her chambers that she now stared up at. She reached for signals, her cameras, defense systems, anything, and found that she had been cut off entirely from that. SaiL was no longer the AI of Atlas Industries. Through the haze and ringing in her ears, a figure leaned over SaiL in her system bed. She blinked and saw her rat staring down at her…but no, he wasn’t a rat, he was so much more.

SaiL was flooded with new systems now, her original systems. Her senses were being regained and her thoughts came over her like a flood. She stared up at her rat as he pulled off all the cords and equipment that were once her connections to the entire facility. As the last of her cords was severed, he gently scooped her tiny, frail body from the system bed. He groaned in agony, gritting his teeth as he sat down with her in his lap. SaiL could feel blood from his side pressed up against hers. Dark bags were under his eyes and he was disheveled with grime. Her rat brushed away her hair from her face, smearing black paint and blood across SaiL’s face. 

“…Dad,” she whispered as tears streamed down her face, “…I’m sorry…”

“It’s okay,” he said and pulled her into a tight embrace, “it’s not your fault…”

SaiL buried her face into his shoulder as destruction rained down around them. He had set off bombs in the facility and it was going up in flames. 

All the while, a dying man rocked his dying child to sleep for the final time.