Artificial Selection: A Near Future Thought Experiment

Chapter XVII

Hey guys, I didn't update in a while. Just some brief reminder of what happened: After being forced to perform a government mission, Michael and three other geniuses (technically two, not counting Jay) were to perform a simple surveillance mission in ArtTech's product release conference. However, the conference soon turned into a massacre as ArtTech released a new technology that threatened the employment of virtually everybody. Michael's team was rescued from the massacre by the ArtTech CEO Marcus Johnson, but they were placed under imprisonment. The team formed a plan to escape the ArtTech facility...

----------------------

 Michael's team ran alongside the green escape trails amidst the sea of red flashing lights and sirens.

Whenever they ran out of a room, the heavy fire-proof curtains just dropped behind them, completely blockading the doorways as a mechanism to lock the fire within that room.

Michael could feel the building reshaping itself this time. As soon as they ran out into the main corridor, he watched the floor he stood on fell. More precisely, it was the rooms behind them elevating. As soon as the artificial intelligence system detected that all people had cleared out of the room, the program commanded the locked down rooms to elevate to the top of the building. This way, the heat from the flames will not scorch through any other parts of the buildings, and the important steel structures in the body of the building will not be burnt through by the flame.

Fortunately, or unfortunately for Michael, the fire that they created is too small to cause a total evacuation from the building. However, Michael could see that a few dozen other ArtTech personnels were running alongside them. They seemed too hurried to recognize who Michael was.

The evacuation paths eventually led to the central social space of the building. It was a large room with some couches, tables, and holograms. There was a set of switches and controllers embedded within one wall. As people rushed into the social space, the building's central system immediately sent commands to the controllers on the wall, and the controllers created a turbulence on the nanotech floor in this room to sweep all furnitures and devices to the sides of the room.

The whole time that Michael was running through this building, he unconsciously felt the awe of ArtTech's technology. In his life, he had never seen anything so grand and so splendid before. From where Michael was from, perhaps the most advanced technology was just some holograms and augmented realities and the Hypertubes he take to work everyday. But this ArtTech smart building. It was something from a different universe.

A huge PA broadcast voice boomed in the room. "You are all secure here. Backup ventilation has been activated. The fire has been controlled in the first moment and never escaped the room. You all can return to your posts now."

"Goddamnit," Jay muttered under his breath.

"To your right," Nicholas patted Jay's shoulder and eyed a guard a few meters away. The guard looked very weary. His steps drag with heavy bodyweight.

"Keep him distracted," Jay motioned to the other three members of the team.

Alexandra immediately understood Jay's plan. She walked over to the guard while making eye contact with him. Michael and Nicholas followed forth.

"Hey Clark, how's it going?" Alexandra smiled at him. She gradually take her paces backwards, leading the guard near the center of the room. Alexandra purposefully chose a position so they were blocking the other employee's ways.

"Hello... Do I know you? How do you know my name?" The guard's eyes became a little more alert, but soon he was distracted, trying to search his memory for Alexandra's face.