Shatters in Space: Stories about Scientific Horrors and Cosmic Threats

8. Project Technovore

Let me just say that, by coming out into the public eye to talk about this, I've risked death from certain military groups trying to hunt me down. The information that I have willingly decided to disclose will not only destroy your way of life, but will shatter all previous illusions of the United States government as a whole. If you think that this is a joke, then you're sadly mistaken. I shouldn't upload this information because I'll be detected. Yes, there are programs installed and hidden in your computer software that you don't even know about, and that the government has granted for use. I could be executed for this but, the world needs to know.

My name is Dr. Andrew King, and I used to be one of the scientists assigned to work on Project Technovore, and I was privy to some classified information and sensitive documents. I worked with my fellow Foundation employees since I was fresh out of college, and I worked on other projects. Those projects, I won't reveal here. I'm already digging my own grave just by telling you this. I used to work with people who are knowledgable about areas of science that the normal average scientist doesn't know even exists. The stuff that can be termed science fiction and impossible. I know stuff about the way the universe works that you don't know.

Project Technovore was a classified project conducted by one of the Foundation's divisions that was tasked with creating a weapon. Not a biological, chemical, or conventional weapon, mind you. No. Project Technovore was tasked with creating a technological weapon. A weapon that was not powered by an outside source. An electronic weapon. The goal of the project was to design and utilize a technological weapon that could affect the operation systems in any computer system. What I mean by this is the creation of a computer retrovirus, a combination of the Trojan Horse and a system corruption virus. We nicknamed it Technovore due to its properties. It's properties were the corruption and modification of any computer system in any kind of computer, government or public networks, anything technological that relied on a system of binary sequences.

It was designed to evolve computers.

The means by this were to modify, distort, and control the system's binary code. This was accomplished via the installation of Technovore into the computer system by way of flash drive. Once imbedded inside the computer software, the virus itself would self insert itself into the system's coding, and it would then retroactively change the coding to suit it's pre-programmed goals. Once it's code was changed, the system would change to suit the virus' needs. The computer would be retroactively used to spread the virus to other systems of its own kind through email and shared data.

The goal of Technovore was to infect as many enemy computers as possible and then destroy all resistance in the system by purging the virus security. It was also designed to cause massive internal damage to any technological device. Cell phones, tablets, computers, anything.

We were going to use it to defeat our nation's enemies through a sneak attack, but, we never got it to Stage Four.

Before we were able to deploy it into the field, so to speak, we discovered something strange. During one of our test runs of the program in one of our own computers, it was allowed free access to all channels between each sites. When it detected the escape route, it left the system, and it continued to spread and infect the other site systems. Each site suffered major internal damage to their computer systems. When all accessible channels were infected, though, the systems began to behave strangely. They seemed to obey the main viral infection as though it was the leader. It acted like an ant hive, with the infected systems being the soldiers and the main viral head being the queen. The virus wasn't as controllable through our placed safety measures as we had thought, and it seemed to be gaining complexity.

When we studied it, we observed that it became more evolved than our systems, it evolved every time it infected a new system. It was controlling every system, directing orders to transmit all over the world. It needed itself to spread. It displayed the need to spread. It was sentient and it wanted to infect the world network. Thankfully, we managed to isolate it within our own network and we tricked it into uploading itself into a flash drive. We sealed the flash drive port so that it could not get out, and this flash drive was modified by our tech team to contain several hundred different computer protection programs inside of it. The project was shut down, the flash drive was sealed away to another division for safe keeping, and we simply chose to forget about it.

The virus is capable of modifying systems so that they obey its command, and it's clear to us that the program was too deadly to deploy in the field. If it was, then the worldwide networks would have been infected and we would have an apocalyptic situation on our hands. We have no idea how it'll react to being allowed to infect the worldwide network. If it was able to infect that many systems, it would transcend beyond technological understanding, and it would be unstoppable. Heck, it could even evolve beyond being able to infect just computer systems. Maybe it could be able to infect humans as well.

The world must know about this, because it's out. We were just alerted by the other division, it broke out of containment. We don't know how, but it's out there right now, and it's evolving. Check the news. On the television. Don't go on the Internet. We've become aware of it evolving. We'll be able to get the first human infected into containment and we have a plan. Maybe we'll leave it in a part of time where computers didn't exist.

God help us all.

Dr. Andrew King
5/12/2067